Cited as an example the tennis player seen in his 1913 poster for Kaffee Hag, which successfully manages to stand a light-coloured character against a pale background, and the Chinese man in the 1894 poster for a musical comedy called A Trip to Chinatown, produced by the Beggarstaffs [James Pryde and his brother-in-law, William Nicholson] for a musical comedy called A Trip to Chinatown. The latter, a condition B+ poster showing restoration and repairs to the folds, sold at $38,000 (£21,470), while the condition A example of Hohlwein's poster sold for $11,000 (£6215).
The Beggarstaffs' poster achieved worldwide acclaim, appearing inLes Maîtres de l'Affiche* in 1899 and was an expensive item even in its own time. In 1899 it was being offered for 40 French francs in a poster catalogue in which Toulouse Lautrec's Aristide Bruant dans son Cabaret cost just 3 francs 50 centimes and Mucha's Bières de Meuse was available for just five francs. The poster is now very rare and this is believed to be the first time that it has ever appeared at auction, but the Beggarstaffs themselves were infuriated by the changes that the printer, Dangerfield, had made to their original cut-out design and declined to add their names. It was Dangerfield who decided to add the chocolate background and psuedo-Chinese typography and William Nicholson, writing in The Idler, in 1896, commented that the overall design was "mutilated by some idiotic imitation of Chinese lettering placed around it to form a border".
* Bound as five vols. in the original decorative cloth bindings designed by Paul Berthon, a complete set of 240 coloured lithos. after posters (plus 16 of original designs), each with blind stamp, that make up Les Maîtres de l'Affiche of 1895-1900 had been sold for $44,000 (£24,860) as part of a prints sale held by Swanns on May 6.
