What's in a name? The disappearance of Gaston Nick

The painter, etcher, and wood engraver Gaston Nick was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, around 1885. He went to Paris to study art, but his career does not appear to have taken off until the 1920s, when he emerges as an important book artist, illustrating works by writers such as Verlaine, Maupassant, and Mérimée with original etchings. Prosper Mérimée was Gaston Nick’s great-uncle. Among the most important of these books are Nick’s editions of the semi-autobiographical novel Jours de famine et de détresse by the Dutch/Belgian author Néel Doff (the source of my first batch of images), of Mérimée's Colomba, and of 5 Contes de Guy de Maupassant (the source of second batch). All three of these works appeared in 1927-1928, the high-water mark of Gaston Nick's artistic career.

Gaston Nick, The Family

Etching, 1927

Gaston Nick, Mother and children

Etching, 1927

Gaston Nick, Child with a kite

Etching, 1927

Gaston Nick, Children at a shop window

Etching, 1927

Gaston Nick, Canalside

Etching, 1927

Gaston Nick’s career appears to come to an end with an edition of Henriot’s Le Diable à l’hotel in 1944; the following year, his career was surveyed by Pierre Mornand in Trente Artistes du Livre. It would be easy to assume that Gaston Nick perished during the war; but in fact he simply changed his name. In 1946 he published an edition of George Sand’s La Petite Fadette, illustrated with colour etchings, under the name G. Nick Petrelli. He used the same name for a solo exhibition at Pelletan Helleu in 1947, and an exhibition at Villefranche-de-Rouergue in 1953, consisting of paintings and etchings of the village of Najac in Aveyron. The reason for this change of name is obscure, but as it is not immediately obvious that Gaston Nick and Nick Petrelli are in fact the same person, the result is that Nick seems to disappear abruptly from the record, and Petrelli to arrive from nowhere. As with Denis Volx, this switchback of nomenclature has understandably confused his posthumous reputation. I do not know when Gaston Nick died, but I assume sometime in the 1950s.

Gaston Nick, Le jour de marché

Etching, 1928

Gaston Nick, Les dîneurs attablés

Etching, 1928

Gaston Nick, Les passagers

Etching, 1928

Gaston Nick, Les petits

Etching, 1928

Gaston Nick, Au Rendez-vous des Amis

Etching, 1928

My third batch of images shows a selection of Gaston Nick's wood engravings from the 1930s, executed for various titles in the series Le livre de demain. These are competently executed, but to my mind they lack the charm of his etchings of the 1920s.

Gaston Nick, Frontispiece for Les Poux de Lion by Pierre Dominique

Wood engraving, 1936

Gaston Nick, Chapterhead for Les Poux de Lion

Wood engraving, 1936

Gaston Nick, Chapterhead for Les Poux de Lion

Wood engraving, 1936

Gaston Nick, Frontispiece for Egalité by Princesse Bibesco

Wood engraving, 1937

Gaston Nick, Chapterhead for Egalité

Wood engraving, 1937

Gaston Nick, Frontispiece for L'ame obscure by Daniel-Rops

Wood engraving, 1938

Gaston Nick, Chapterhead for L'ame obscure

Wood engraving, 1938

Looking at Nick's etchings while writing this post, the deliberate semi-naivety of the round-faced characters kept reminding me of a work by someone else, but I couldn't remember who. Now I have found the work I was thinking of, and I do think it bears quite  remarkable stylistic resemblance. It is an 1864 etching by Armand Queyroy. 

Armand Queyroy, Le chemin de l'école

Etching, 1864

Mathurin Louis Armand Queyroy was born in Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher) in 1830. Queyroy studied painting under Luminais, and etching under Maxime Lalanne. Armand Queyroy was, like Lalanne, a founder member of the Société des Aquafortistes, who published a number of his etchings. He contributed etchings to the journals L'Illustration Nouvelle, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and L'Artiste. He lived in Moulins in the Auvergne, and in the 1860s published several albums of etchings of subjects in the Auvergne, including an album of 21 plates, printed by Delâtre, of Le vieux Moulins. His similar album Le vieux Blois of 1864 earned him a letter of praise from Victor Hugo, and Queyroy was quick to reissue it with a facsimile of Hugo's letter. Armand Queyroy's etchings appeared between 1862 and 1886. He died in  1893.