The title translates as ‘The Greyhound and the Renault Swallow on a Visit’. It illustrates a fine Renault automobile whose cars the artist Montaut, had associated with the swallow indicating swiftness and speed. The Greyhound was a name given to early French airships powered by Renault engines, again an indication of their reputation for speed. Here the two are combined with a game of tennis which had become popular towards the end of the nineteenth century.The artist here is Ernest Montaut (1878-1909) who is the most famous of the early illustrators of motor sports. He was born in Montauban, north of Toulouse, into an era in France where the motor car was beginning to catch the public imagination. Until Montaut, there had been no artist of motor racing. He began in 1897 to chronicle these races in art. He drew upon the poster art of the period produced by the likes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and Jules Cheret (1836-1932). ‘His lighting can be Impressionist, his trees, swaying to the passage of a car, take on Symbolist curves. He is not afraid to colour like a Fauve’ (Tubbs). He drew directly on stone from which each print was made. Then followed the extensive hand coloured process using several stencils elaborately cut for each image, one for each colour. This is a process known as pochoir, a forerunner of the modern silk-screening process. As demand grew, he took on more staff eventually employing about a dozen to do the colouring alone. The motor car industry was booming, and his posters were used to decorate showrooms to encourage sales. He was not only known for motor cars, but his posters depicted other motorised machines, especially aeroplanes, another recent invention, along with dirigibles and motorboats. His earliest posters date from the late 1890s but the glory period is the early 1900s leading up to his tragic death in 1909 from appendicitis. Automobile Quarterly (Summer 1962) ‘Montaut & Atelier’ pp. 196-213; Clendinin, Dorothy (1976) ‘Lively Legacy. The first automotive prints for the first automotive enthusiasts’ in ‘Road & Track’ pp. 70-73; Helck, Peter (1977) ‘Car Classics’; ‘Collection de L’Atelier Montaut-Mabileau’ (1992) Musee de La Colline de L’Automobile; Tubbs, Douglas B. (1978) ‘Art and the Automobile’.