Rene Vincent / Berliet

One of our favourite artists from the early days of motoring is Rene Vincent. In common with many of his contemporaries; Montaut, Geo Ham etc. Rene Vincent was often asked to produce commercial 'images' for manufacturers looking to promote their products. One of his clients was the manufacturer Berliet, Berliet were on the path to internationalise their brand and wanted to produce a brochure showing their vehicles in various cosmopolitan cities and asked Rene to visualise their products to achieve this. Rene Vincent - in common with Ernest Montaut had began his career with light-hearted images of the motorcar and this was the well troden route that he took with the Berliet commission.

Rene produced a series of 6 images of large cities, including Chicago & Bombay, which probably demonstates the scope of Berliet's ambition! (Credit to Sworders auctions for the image).

These were brochure sized images (230mm x 180mm) and were produced lithographically - Over the years many (if not all) of these brochures have been cannabilsed for the prints alone - which is sad and not something that we encourage here at The Mabileau! however on the plus side we were recently offered 2 of these prints and are delighted that they now rest at the gallery!

"Nurnberg."

"Sevilla"

As we can see from these 2 - Rene liked accentuating his stereotypes! 

Although 'small' images - compared to our usual scale, these are very nice, and dating from 1906 - we feel that they should be treasured and added to our Rene Vincent archive!