Psst! Wanna Buy a Poster?

We arrived by train on a Friday night in this romantic jewel of a city just in time for the Spandex Ballet. Up and down the Cours Mirabeau, from Les Deux Garcons sidewalk cafe to La Rotonde fountain, chic young women in tight Capris promenaded past muscular men in black leather vests. Artists in primo cafe seats picked out interesting faces in the crowd and sketched, perhaps hoping to be the next Renoir, Manet . . . or maybe even Toulouse-Lautrec.

My wife, Bobbie, and I were thinking this way because we were in France to find the Perfect French Poster. As we imagined it, our poster would be stunning, visually arresting, with a touch of whimsy. It would add magic to our blah dining room wall. It would transport us to another time and another place. It would brighten our moods. The subject could be anything--vermouth, Duesenbergs, soap. We would be content with prints rather than originals because we didn’t want to spend more than $100. But, of course, we’d look at everything.

We had chosen France because this is the birthplace of the poster--l’affiche--as art form. The blessed event occurred in Paris in 1867, when Jules Cheret created a poster promoting a stage production starring Sarah Bernhardt. Until then, posters consisted of lots of text and small, dull drawings, poorly reproduced. Cheret refined lithographic techniques at his own print shop, painted spectacularly brilliant, riveting illustrations and revolutionized advertising in public places.

We began our quest within hours of arriving in Paris on vacation in July. We would look at, study and take notes about posters in nine cities, eight museums, three flea markets and 30 shops over the course of 15 days.

Our first day was fun but fruitless, spent combing the gift shops at the Musee d’Orsay and the Musee Marmottan. The posters we found were beautiful, but certainly not whimsical. Then, Day 2: On the tony Rue du Bac, on the Left Bank, we were in Galerie Maeght checking out a two-room exhibit of oils, gouaches and mobiles by Alexander Calder when, bingo! We struck gold. Turns out the Maeght is Paris’ biggest pop poster store. On display were more than 300 posters, a distinctive collection, priced $7.50 to $120.

Two caught our eye: One depicted a bespectacled elephant reading a program for a 1983 exhibit at Paris’ poster museum. A shoe was sticking out of the elephant’s head. Price: $12. The second showed a man in top hat and tails, two women in fur coats and two gleaming Studebakers, vintage 1930.

The gallery was full of Americans buying 10 or 20 posters at a clip, crowing deliriously over the bargains. The market was particularly brisk in auto racing posters. Two couples bought prints of the same 1933 Grand Prix Monaco poster for $22 while we were there.

Galerie Maeght will pack and ship your purchase: $30 for up to 20 posters by mail, $90 by FedEx. I was all set to buy our two favorites when Bobbie said, “These are cute, but is either one our Perfect French Poster?”

We went ahead with our plan to check out Librairie des Musees Nationaux, a bookstore that stocks posters from all of France’s national museums, including the Louvre. There we found posters for special exhibitions going back to 1966, and most of the images were inspired and striking. One that we liked showed an image in white ceramic of a man’s naked body upside down, with his neck snapped backward toward his buttocks, his chin just above a disembodied male head emerging from a hole in a jar. Only $5. But I was still regretting the ones that got away.

We walked a few blocks farther to Galerie Documents, Paris’ most distinguished antique poster shop, specializing in posters from 1875 to 1930. The friendly manager sat us down with 10 catalogs of her current stock. The average poster cost about $500; many went much higher. One of Cheret’s most widely reprinted posters, advertising the Moulin Rouge with a drawing of a cancan dancer with pouty lips and a strawberry blond topknot, was priced at $2,700.

Across the Seine, on the Rue de Rivoli between the Louvre and the Tuileries, we found Paris’ poster museum. The Musee de la Publicite (Museum of Advertising) holds 40,000 posters--all on computers. Behind the computer room is an eight-room center for exhibitions, and we had stumbled onto a good one: classic art in magazine ads and posters. Two posters from the years when Bill Graham ran the Fillmore West in San Francisco used Venus de Milo to sell a couple of amazing back-to-back double bills: The Who and Woody Herman on June 17, 18 and 19, 1969; and Carlos Santana and Ike and Tina Turner on June 20 and 21.

We loved the gift shop. On sale were reproductions of 50 vintage French advertising posters, from $4.50 to $10.50. Our favorite read “J’aime ma Peugeot” (“I love my Peugeot”) and showed a blond resting her cheek against the hood of a Peugeot from the 1930s. Price: $9. But perfect? Nope.

Early the next morning, we took a train from the Gare St. Lazare to Vernon in Normandy, a 45-minute ride, and a taxi to Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny.

The gardens were gorgeous, but we had a mission: The gift shop was as big as a Ralphs. You want an official chrome-plated Monet hoe? $36. A necktie with Monet’s 1881 painting “Impression, Sunrise,” that gave Impressionism its name? Waterlily earrings? They’re all here.

So were 50 posters, most of them announcing Monet exhibitions. But, no, none was our Perfect French Poster.

Maybe Marc Chagall’s creations would inspire a better museum store, we hoped. His work is so poster-like, full of bright colors and startling images--flying cows and horses, upside-down birds, donkey heads on fish bodies.

The Musee Marc Chagall is in Nice, on the Riviera, which we reached by train from Marseilles, the rail hub of southern France.

The museum was a real treat, with cool, spacious galleries and a reflecting pool in front of a stone mural, but the gift shop could have used some help from the Monet marketers. At Giverny, you could choose from 20 neckties with Monet’s brightest works. At the Chagall museum, you could buy one tie with the painter’s name on it but no painting. Only a handful of posters depicting Chagall’s work were for sale.

As we were leaving, I whipped out a map to look for the Musee des Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret, and three Chagall staff members in their early 20s immediately offered to show us how to get there by bus. They wrote out meticulous directions on Post-its.

Over the course of his long life (1836-1932), Cheret produced more than 1,000 posters. But none are on the walls of the museum named for him. Rather, it holds an art collection that was assembled in Nice by Napoleon III in the 19th century and rededicated in Cheret’s honor in 1928. Art buffs subsequently contributed more than 50 of Cheret’s works.

Cheret’s light, cheerful, frothy oils and pastels of gauzy, gossamer nymphets in springtime reminded us of his posters: upbeat, positive, no warts. Only after a well-born dissolute named Toulouse-Lautrec received his first Moulin Rouge commission in 1891 would French poster-making take a step toward realism. Cheret himself, though competing with Toulouse-Lautrec for the same commissions, called him Le Mai^tre, The Master.

A few days after our visit to Nice, we found ourselves in Albi, about 270 miles due west. The charming river town was the birthplace of Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and is home to his museum.

The Musee Toulouse-Lautrec turned out to have a wonderful collection. In addition to more than 600 paintings by the 4-foot-10 master, all but a few of his 31 posters were on display. Copies of 14 were for sale, the biggest size only $27. We could have bought one and ended our quest, but then we thought: Haven’t we seen these before, maybe in Fuddruckers? Dr. Schneiderman’s dental office? No, thanks.

We put our faith in the next town on our itinerary, Aix-en-Provence. And indeed, as we were walking back from the Sunday morning flower market, there it was. Our Perfect French Poster. Displayed in the window of a high-end bookstore called Librairie Makaire, it was a highly stylized and madly busy impression of 1920s Tangier, then an exotic nook of the French empire.

In the foreground, three men, wearing turbans and djellabahs, sat on carpets, selling melons, pumpkins and peaches. Beside them were two women wearing sombreros. In the middle, orange-sailed fishing boats cruised the cerulean Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelmed by a huge, chocolate-sailed dhow. In the background, houses painted blue to avert the evil eye sat in a crammed stack on steep hills, crowned by a bronze minaret high atop the casbah.

Was our Perfect French Poster for sale, or was it window dressing? Makaire was closed on Sunday and Monday, so we could only hope.

On Monday, biting our lips, we took the train to Avignon, where seven popes rebelling against Rome reigned during the 14th century. Avignon was festooned with posters, positively awash in them.

At the Palais des Papes, Avignon’s main attraction, commerce ran rampant. For sale were papal palace army knives, neckties and booties. You could taste wine, $5 for three samples of Co^tes-du-Rho^ne. And there was a fine collection of posters, none more than $7.50. One showed a fat pope wearing red nail polish and red earrings. On his lap was seated a fat boy with a gold halo in his left hand and an olive in his right. Behind them was a green sheet held up by angels. It cost $1.50, and we should have bought it, but we were obsessed with our Tangier poster and could think of nothing else.

Early Tuesday morning we were back at Makaire, rummaging through the poster collection of this venerable bookstore, founded in 1597. We found great posters-- a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL gull-wing coupe, James Dean, the Promenade des Anglais in Nice around 1930. But no Tangier.

A clerk asked if she could help us. We inquired about the poster in the window.

“Can you pay 145 francs?” she asked.

Since this came to about $22, we said yes.

She unlatched the interior door to the display window, gently removed the poster from its clips and wrapped it up.

It’s not Monet. It’s not cancan girls. It’s not even France. But it is Perfect.

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GUIDEBOOK

Poster Pursuit in Paris and Beyond

Timely tip: Many of the following establishments vary their business hours by season. Call first--or have your hotel concierge call--for days and hours. The listed phone numbers are for local calls.

Shops: Galerie Maeght, 42 Rue du Bac, 6th arrondissement, Paris; local telephone 01-4548-4515. Librairie des Musees Nationaux, 10 Rue de l’Abbaye, 6th arrondissement, Paris; tel. 01-4329-2145. Galerie Documents, 53 Rue de Seine, 6th arrondissement, Paris; tel. 01-4354-5068. Librairie Makaire, Place du Palais, Aix-en-Provence; tel. 04-4238-1963.

Artists’ museums: Musee Toulouse-Lautrec, Palais de la Berbie, Albi; tel. 05-6349-4870. Musee des Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret, 33 Ave. des Baumettes, Nice; tel. 04-9215-2828.

Poster museums: Musee de la Publicite, 107 Rue de Rivoli, 1st arrondissement, Paris; tel. 01-4455-5750. Centre Municipal de l’Affi^che, 58 Allee Charles de Fitte, Toulouse; tel. 05-6159-2464.

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Barry Zwick is an assistant news editor at The Times.