Terrot Catalog 1893 First Edition

Terrot Poster Gallery

Terrot advertised on the wall for sixty years, and the sheets that survive run from the earliest days of the French cycling poster to the last of the marque’s bicycles. Twenty-one of them are gathered here, from the 1890s through the early 1950s: ornate art nouveau at one end, flat art deco lettering at the other, and a bicycle at the center of almost every one.

The strongest thread in the run is a single idea repeated. Between about 1900 and 1903 the marque commissioned at least five sheets that stage the same scene: a rider comes out of a stone railway tunnel toward the viewer while a locomotive runs out of the dark behind. The joke is that the bicycle is quicker than the train, and it is played straight — in color, in monochrome, once with an open motor car in place of the bicycle. The printers change across the series, Vercasson of the rue de Lancry, La Lithographie Parisienne under Romanet, Kossuth in Paris, but the idea does not.

From 1902 the work goes to one hand. Marius Rossillon, who signed himself M. Tamagno, drew seven Terrot posters in eight years and moved the marque out of the tunnel and into the mountains: a woman freewheeling past a Touring Club de France signpost warning of the descent from the Col du Tourmalet, a couple with a map open on the sand below Mont-Saint-Michel, a night ride away from a floodlit exhibition palace with the Arc de Triomphe on the skyline. Each sheet carries the marque’s competition record along its foot, and the awards those banners list date the pictures rather better than the estimates attached to them.

After 1913 the pictures get simpler and the copy gets better. Dréville drew a grinning rider freewheeling downhill reading a newspaper, under the best line the marque ever printed: rouler sur une bicyclette Terrot, c’est toujours descendre une côte — riding a Terrot bicycle is always freewheeling downhill. Then the drawing gives way to lettering, the range widens from cycles to vélomoteurs, scooters and motorcycles, and the last sheets sell the bicycle of the Union française to markets the marque had not been drawn for before.

All twenty-one Terrot posters, transcribed

Every sheet below is now cataloged on its own in the Ebykr Poster Archive, with its printed lettering transcribed line by line, its printer and agency credits recorded and its artist attribution checked against the sheet itself rather than taken on trust. The archive is searchable to the word and can be filtered by artist, decade and country.

Browse the Terrot posters in the Poster Archive ›

Sepia Terrot Dijon cycles and automobiles poster, circa 1900, a woman cycling out of a railway tunnel as a steam locomotive approaches
Color Cycles Terrot Dijon poster, circa 1901, an elegant woman seated in an early automobile beside a tunnel with a steam train
Cycles Terrot Dijon poster, circa 1901, a woman in checked bloomers riding out of a stone railway tunnel as a red locomotive nears
Terrot Dijon cycles and automobiles poster, circa 1901, a woman in brown riding a bicycle from a stone tunnel arch with a steam train behind
Cycles Terrot Dijon poster by D'Ante, 1896, a cyclist greeting a woman in regional dress with a black dog on a country road
Comic Terrot Dijon poster by Dréville, 1913, a harlequin freewheeling downhill reading a newspaper, captioned that riding a Terrot is always coasting downhill
Ornate Terrot Dijon poster, 1898, a central vignette of a couple with a bicycle framed by art nouveau flowers, with tandem and roadster insets
Art deco Terrot poster by J. Le Tord, 1939, two cyclists climbing a curving mountain road high above a green valley
Ornate Terrot Dijon poster, 1893, a central vignette of a couple with a bicycle framed by art nouveau flowers, with tandem and roadster insets
Bicyclettes Terrot Dijon poster by L. Baylac, 1894, a woman in a yellow floral blouse standing with a bicycle as a cyclist rides past a village
Terrot Dijon cycles and automobiles poster by Tamagno, 1902, a woman cycling from a stone tunnel as a steam locomotive emerges
Terrot Dijon cycles and motorcycles poster by Tamagno, 1903, a woman descending a mountain path past a Col du Tourmalet danger sign, riders behind
Terrot Dijon cycles and motorcycles poster by Tamagno, 1904, a man riding an early Terrot motorcycle on a coast road with a woman cycling behind
Terrot Dijon touring bicycles poster by Tamagno, 1905, a man and woman pausing on an alpine path near a Chamonix milestone with snowy peaks beyond
Terrot Dijon touring bicycles poster by Tamagno, 1906, a couple resting on a headland at sunset with Mont-Saint-Michel and two bicycles below
Terrot Dijon Cycles Motorettes poster by Tamagno, 1907, a woman cycling at night past a floodlit exhibition palace and a crowd of riders
Terrot Dijon Cycles Motorettes poster by Tamagno, 1908, a woman on a bicycle beneath a tree as a biplane and an early automobile pass at sunset
Cycles Terrot Dijon poster by Plouzeau, 1900, a red-haired woman cycling out of a stone tunnel as a small locomotive approaches on the tracks
Art deco Terrot Cycles Dijon poster by V. Dumay, 1933, a man and woman cycling side by side above bold stylized Terrot lettering
Terrot poster by V. Dumay, 1952, a goggled rider on a Terrot motorcycle with a woman waving from a bicycle, for cycles velomoteurs scooters and motos
Terrot Le Vélo de l'Union Française poster by V. Dumay, circa 1950, a man riding a bicycle no-hands before a Terrot shop in a colonial tropical setting
Spanning the brand's full lifespan from the 1890s through the 1950s, these lithographed Terrot advertising posters trace changing artistic styles, from ornate Art Nouveau tunnel-and-train scenes to bold Art Deco lettering and mid-century tropical imagery, while a bicycle (and later a motorcycle) remains the constant centerpiece.

Related Ebykr Article:

Terrot: Forging the Way – https://www.ebykr.com/terrot-forging-the-way/

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