A bold original Art Deco French travel poster from 1935 by Pierre Duval, promoting the cable car to the Béout mountain at Lourdes. The design highlights a suspended gondola filled with passengers, soaring above the valley with the Pyrenees in the background and the Basilica of Lourdes below. This striking composition celebrates modern engineering and interwar tourism in the French Alps.
Artist: Pierre Duval
Year: 1935
Size: 23.6 × 12 inches (60 × 30.5 cm)
Printing: Lithograph on paper; professionally linen-backed
Printer: L. Serre & Co., Paris
Condition: A– Very Good; clean, fresh colour, minor margin staining at top left corner
Authenticity: Original 1930s lithograph (not a reproduction); Certificate of Authenticity included
The interwar period was a golden age for French travel posters, with rail companies, spa towns, and mountain resorts commissioning vibrant lithographs to advertise their attractions. Duval’s design for Lourdes captures both the daring novelty of cable cars in the 1930s and the enduring appeal of pilgrimage and tourism in the Pyrenean town.
The Téléphérique du Béout, completed in the early 1930s, was among the pioneering mountain cableways in France, offering panoramic access to visitors. Duval’s bold geometric forms, simplified palette, and dramatic perspective are hallmarks of Art Deco poster design. Today, this piece is valued by collectors of both transport history and modernist graphic art.
Ships rolled in a heavy-duty archival tube, fully insured. Every order includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity from Vintage Poster UK. A powerful travel poster that embodies both the romance of Lourdes and the optimism of 1930s French design.
