An extremely attractive pre first world war poster of the 1913 French Grand Prix at Le Mans held on 5 August 1913. It illustrates the winner Paul Florian Bablot (1873-1932) racing his Delage Type Y automobile. The new circuit was shorter at 20 miles and emphasized the road holding capabilities of the Delage. He set two records. His average speed was 77 mph over the 355.5 miles, and one lap averaged 85 mph (Illustrated London News).The artist signed as ‘Gamy’ an anagram of Magy, whose full name was Marguerite Millet (1883-1949) wife of Ernest Montaut (1878-1909), both accomplished artists. He is one of 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. The cars had developed into large machines with big engines and were now being raced town to town on roads rutted by horse and cart. The thrill of these roaring down the road was captured best by Montaut, who 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 is credited with inventing two artistic methods to illustrate speed amongst others. The use of speed lines to indicate movement, the bending of the foreground of the car all help to project the feeling of speed and power. It was however Diego Velasquez who first blurred spinning wheels in a painting entitled ‘The Spinners’ from 1657! 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. Note the reference here to a Bosch magneto, Claudel carburettor, and Arecal GA radiator. 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. His wife continued the business. 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’.