French Fashion Magazine Le Follet Lithograph 19th Century Antique #2372 Toudouze

This mid-19th century lithograph is framed, measurinig approx 13 in x 15 in.  The image area within the matting is approx 7.75 in x 9.5 in.  It is in excellent condition with no fading of the image or hand-colouring.  The lithograph is known as #2372.

One of the longest-lived fashion plate magazines of the 19th century, Le Follet first appeared in 1829. It was exceptionally stylish— many of the models were set at the opera or at evening events or placed against ornamental garden scenes. After the 1840s, all the best fashion plate artists worked for Le Follet, among them the famous Anaïs Toudouze, (one of three artistic Colin sisters, the others being Laure Noël and Héloïse Leloir), who later taught her techniques to her daughter Isabelle. Anaïs’s output was prolific: she contributed to 27 fashion journals of her time. 

Anaïs Toudouze (née Adele-Anaïs Colin; 1822–1899) was a French fashion plate illustrator, born in Ukraine. She was born to a painter and lithographer, Alexandre-Marie Colin and his wife, who was also a painter.

When fashion plates became a popular form of illustration this provided a way for Anaïs's work to be mass-produced. Instead of making the illustrator redraw the same exact image over and over, the artist would either etch, engrave, or lithograph the image and then color it in by hand. This form of production was much more efficient and realistic to produce fashion magazines at the weekly rate they were being printed.