Not only do I find it charming to correspond by means of the illustrated card, but also interesting because if we know how to take advantage of it, it may become a very useful tool to reveal art to the masses.
– Leonetto Cappiello
“Correspondence cards”, as they were called then, were first introduced in Austria on October 1, 1869. In the years that followed they made their appearance in many other countries; July 1, 1870 in Germany; in 1871 in England, Belgium and Switzerland; then in Russia and in France in 1872; in the United States and Spain in 1873; in Italy in 1874, the year the Bern Postal Treaty admitted them in international service. Their success was considerable and instant.
In Berlin, on the first day they were put on the market, 45,468 cards were mailed, and in two months two million were mailed in Germany alone. In May of 1873, the first month the postcard was in use in the U.S. 31 million cards were sold. This new medium of correspondence was at its inception only a card without any illustration; the picture appears only little by little. Since the war of 1870, two pioneers, Schwarz in Germany and Besnardeau in France, printed cards with patriotic and military motifs: it was only a hesitant beginning, even before the process was officially recognized. It was only progressively, and often thanks to advertising, that illustration developed. The role of the German speaking countries was preponderant in this development.
As early as 1875 Schwarz put 25 humorous cards on the market; he was soon imitated by other publishers, and from that point on the movement conquered the world. The golden age of the postcard spans the first 20 years of our century. In 1899, production reached 88 million in Germany, 14 million in Great Britain, 12 million in Belgium and 8 million in France. Most of these were photographic cards, however these decorative postcards are directly linked to the prodigious revival of print at the end of the 19th century. The print, until then confined to the reproduction of classical tableaux, became the preferred instrument of a spirited generation of young artists who, in reaction to Academism fought for a new art, “Art Nouveau.”
Lithography, with recent improvements which made it possible to produce a great number of plates, in color and at low cost, arrived in the nick of time to serve this purpose. The triumph of this social art, the poster, rapidly covered the walls and became fashionable. From the largest to the smallest format, this concern to introduce art into daily life predominated. It is therefore not surprising that artists who were interested in the poster also liked to express themselves with the postcard. Such artists include Steinlen, Mucha, Beardsley, and Mataloni to name a few.
The idea and development of the postcard was a powerful one in its ability to bring art to a mass audience, especially at such a low cost. It is important to place the artistic postcard in the context that made for its development, to remind us of its relationship to the poster and the movement of which both media were an integral part. Such works of art bear witness to a time when people dared believe in an art that was truly accessible to the public.
Reference: Art Nouveau Postcards, The Posterists’ Postcards, pg. 4-5