Posters by Constant Léon Duval

Constant (Léon) Duval (1877 - 1956) was born in Champlay, Yonne, France. He originally studied painting under Antoine Guillemet and Paul Michel Dupuy. He designing posters from 1910 to 1936 for French and Belgian Railway companies, such as Chemins de Fer de l'Etat, Chemins de Fer d'Orleans, and Chemin de Fer de Paris a Orleans, primarily in northern France, Brittany, Normandy, and Belgium. His style and subject matter is similar to Pierre Commarmond (1897-1982/France), who was, however, 20 years the younger. Duval's finely rendered scenes mark his sensibility as belonging more to the pre-war era, eventhough many of his posters were created in the 1920's and 1930s. While often using many of the same motifs, Commarmond's scenes are much more "graphically" simplified. He died in 1956 in Saint-Piat, Eure-et-Loir, France.