Chocolate has its place in art as most wonderful things do: Renoir painted a lady stirring a luscious cup of chocolate in 1878, and Jeanne-Etienne Liotard created a detailed record of how chocolate was served in chocolate houses a century and a half before that.
But one of the most satisfying sources of chocolate art must be the advertising posters of the turn of the 20th century. In art nouveau and art deco styles, these posters sang the praises of chocolate, hot cocoa, chocolate and chocolate cookies.
So many of these elegant designs were created by the illustrators of the time that there is a book of Chocolate Advertising Posters, bilingual in French and English, by Alain Weill and Dr. Israel Perry. This is a lavish coffee table book, at a suitably lavish price.
Whether you enjoy them online, on your walls, or in books, you can't miss the joie-de-vivre of these images. The artists may have been experiencing the well-documented mood-elevating effects of theobromine.
