Jules Chéret was born in 1836 in Paris to a humble family of artisans. Since his family lived in poverty and deprivation, Jules Chéret’s formal education ended when he was 13. His father, a typographer, placed Chéret in a three-year apprenticeship with a lithographer. Later, he studied painting at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin, Paris, as a pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Like other students, Chéret also studied the techniques of various artists, past and present, by visiting Paris museums. In 1858 he printed his first color poster in France. His achievements in printmaking were so astonishing that he ultimately became known as "the father of modern lithography," as well as the "Father of the Poster".

In 1889-90 Chéret created two posters for the Moulin Rouge. His art possessed modernity, innovation, and established artistic quality, and commercial effectiveness in a mixture guaranteed to attract the interest of the audiences in Paris.

Chéret’s oil paintings and pastels are magical, charming and ethereal. They always illustrated women, carnival and picnic scenes, a pierrot figure, dancers appearing as if they float in the air, tambourine players, actresses with flower decorated bonnets and flowing dresses. He did not show his original painting and pastels at a Salon, and only in 1912 he showed his works in an exhibition at The Louvre. His talent as an fine artist was immediately evident and thereafter he spent most of his time devoted to creating oil paintings and pastels. He also decorated walls of villas and theaters, and murals in Nice for the Prefecture and the curtain for the Musee Grevin.

Chéret became known for his popular bright orange, blue and green music hall posters. He realized a poster had to produce "a reaction of amusement, curiosity, excitement or some positive feeling which will help make the right points,'' as Harold Hutchinson writes in "The Poster: An Illustrated History From 1860'' (Viking). Hutchinson notes that by 1880 Chéret was so good at his craft that a Paris art critic wrote, ``there was a thousand times more talent in the smallest of Chéret’s posters than in the majority of the pictures on the walls of the Paris Salon.''

Collectors all over the world seek out his original works. Chéret’s original oil paintings, pastels and posters are in museums and galleries throughout the world. In 1925 his vision failed him yet his loss of sight did not cause him to dwell in darkness. In 1932 he died at the age of ninety-six. In 1933 a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Salon’s Exhibition, "Automne de Paris."