Jean d’Ylen (Born 1866 or 1886) was born in Paris, France. He was born as Jean Paul Beguin but changed his name to Jean d'Ylen in 1912. D’Ylen served during the First World War in the Cartography Department of the French Army. He studied at a municipal school of fine arts. Originally, he started as a jewelry designer; he began designing posters full-time in 1919. From the 1920s through to the 1930s, he designed posters for Auto Berliet, Biere Gangloff, Shell, Marsala Florio, Cusenier Liqueur, and other products. Serious minded, business-like and confident – there’s nothing somewhat Bohemian about the image that the artist projects to prospective clients in the pages of Commercial Art magazine. The biographical details of d’Ylen are scant, even his year of birth is not accurately known, but it is believed that he was a pupil of the great Cappiello - that assumption is perfectly sensible.
His mastery of the art of colorful product characterization is clearly derived from the exotic and animated imagery of Cappiello. The scantiness of his biographical information is bewildering given his massive success, in both England and France. He had an impressive list of clients, and the enduring popularity of his images is unmatched. The images are widely marketed online at AllPosters and the like. D’Ylen’s posters took pride of place around 1924 suggesting that his reputation was at its peak during this time. D’Ylen participated in many art exhibitions and received positive criticism from viewers and judges. He died in 1938.
