Fête des Vignerons Vintage Wine Poster by Marguerite Burnat-Provins, 1905

Marguerite Burnat-Provins’s Fête des Vignerons 1905 Vevey places a genial wine-grower at the centre of a richly decorative celebration. Wearing a broad yellow hat, brown waistcoat and loose white shirt, the moustachioed figure raises an ornamented wine glass while grape leaves and a heavy green cluster curl around him. Warm ochres and tobacco browns stand out against the cooler blue of the distant landscape, giving the vertically arranged poster both immediacy and depth.

Created in 1905, the design promoted Vevey’s Fête des Vignerons, the renowned Swiss festival devoted to wine-growing traditions and communal pageantry. Burnat-Provins, a French artist associated with the decorative arts and poster design, was particularly suited to such a commission: her elegant outlines, expressive colour and feeling for ornament turn the festival’s agricultural subject into a clear public spectacle. The poster belongs to an era in which illustrated advertising was becoming an essential part of civic life, giving festivals and destinations a distinctive visual identity in streets, stations and other public spaces.

A closer look

The foreground figure is treated almost as an emblem of the festival. His broad hat creates a strong disc of yellow near the top of the composition, while the dark waistcoat anchors the lighter shirt beneath it. Subtle shadow below the chin gives his face volume without disturbing the poster’s predominantly flat, graphic character. His moustache and cheerful expression lend him individuality, avoiding the anonymity of a purely symbolic figure.

A grapevine winds across the upper part of the design, its patterned leaves forming a natural frame. At the upper right, the bunch of grapes is both descriptive and decorative: an immediately legible sign of viticulture, but also a compact arrangement of repeated rounded forms. The curves of leaf, tendril and glass soften the figure’s upright stance. In the distance, blue sky and mountain forms open the composition beyond the densely worked foreground, connecting the festival to the landscape surrounding Vevey.

The lower section shifts decisively from illustration to information. The words “FÊTE des Vignerons, Vevey” are incorporated in bold decorative lettering, while smaller text announces “1800 Figurants, 12500 places assises numérotées” and lists the August dates of the 1905 performances. These figures communicate the considerable scale of the occasion: 1,800 performers and 12,500 numbered seats. Rather than appearing as an afterthought, the typography participates in the same ornamental language as the vine, balancing practical detail with visual flourish.

Context and significance

The Fête des Vignerons is rooted in the wine-growing culture of the Vevey region and is staged as an elaborate public celebration rather than a conventional trade advertisement. Burnat-Provins therefore had to convey several ideas at once: wine, locality, abundance and spectacle. She achieves this through an economical hierarchy. The raised glass supplies the celebratory gesture; the grapes identify the agricultural theme; the mountain landscape establishes place; and the emphatic lettering delivers the event itself.

The result is a particularly vivid example of early twentieth-century festival graphics. Its appeal lies not only in its bright palette or convivial subject, but in the close integration of figure, landscape, plant ornament and text. Every element contributes to the public character of the Fête, from the wine-grower’s theatrical presence to the unexpectedly precise details of dates, performers and seating capacity.

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