The Ault & Wiborg Co., Art Nouveau poster

Posters spread rapidly in Europe and America. Poster exhibitions were staged in Britain and Italy (1894), Germany and Switzerland (1896) and in Russia (1897). National styles established themselves soon. The leading American poster designers were William Bradley and Edward Penfield, famous for his illustration and advertising placards for Harper's New Monthly Magazine. William H. Bradley - known as the "American Beardsley" - made his reputation from poster design. Famous for producing The Twins (1894), the first American Art Nouveau poster, Bradley's style blended features of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Japanese block printing and Art Nouveau.

Born in Boston in 1868, William Henry Bradley was an American Art Nouveau illustrator and artist. Largely self-taught as an artist, he began working in a printer’s shop at the age of twelve. Like many French artists of that time, he borrowed stylistic elements from Japanese prints, working in flat, broad color planes and cropped forms. Bradley embraced the Art Nouveau movement and was influenced by the work of the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. His 1894 design for Chicago's Chap-Book magazine, titled The Twins, has been called the first American Art Nouveau poster. Nicknamed the "Dean of American Designers" by The Saturday Evening Post, he was the highest-paid American artist of the early 20th century.