Port d'eaux-mortes - George Grosz in France

George Grosz (1893-1959) is best remembered for his violent satirical drawings of the decadent Berlin of the 1920s, which depict a corrupt world of leering businessmen pawing at prostitutes. These drawings were collected and reproduced in publications such as Ecce Homo (1923). Ecce Homo was seized by the Public Prosecutor, and in February 1924 Grosz was tried for obscenity and fined 6,000 marks. It was perhaps this that prompted an extended trip to France, for the whole of April and May of 1924, resulting in his first French exhibition in that November, and a further extended spell in France from June to October in 1925. Grosz had studied in Paris in 1912 at the Atelier Colarossi, at which time he met likeminded artists such as Moise Kisling and Jules Pascin, and made friends with Bohemian figures such as the writer Pierre Mac Orlan. It was to Mac Orlan that Grosz turned for guidance to the new post-war Paris. As Hans Hess writes in his excellent biography George Grosz, "In April 1924 Grosz travelled to Paris for the first time since the war. With his old friend, Pierre Mac Orlan, he visited Pascin, and with Francis Carco and Man Ray, explored 'Montmartre at night', making the typical remark all visitors make that they 'went to those hidden places which no foreigner ever gets to know'." The kind of hidden places Mac Orlan and Carco favoured is made clear in the subjects of Grosz's Paris drawings: the brothel Le petit moulin, another famous maison close in the rue Blondel, or the seedy Bar du Dingo, full of pimps and their girls.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Prix 300

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Au Beau Patron

Lithograph, 1926

It was probably the following year that George Grosz made the eight original lithographs in this post, for a novella by Pierre Mac Orlan entitled Port d'eaux-mortes (eaux-mortes means a neap tide rather than the literal "dead waters", though no doubt Mac Orlan liked the metaphorical heft of the phrase). The book was published in 1926 by Au Sans Pareil, in a total edition of 1260 copies, plus 120 suites of the lithographs on Chine, 40 on Hollande, and 20 on vieux Japon. The title page reads: Pierre Mac Orlan, Port d'eaux-mortes, récit orné de huit lithographies originales de Georges Grosz. The lithographs were printed by Duchatel, Paris. The bulk of the edition (including my copy) was printed on vélin Lafuma de Voiron.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Oncle Paul, accordéoniste

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La Chance

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue à Brest

Lithograph, 1926

The lithographs for Port d'eaux-mortes reprise many of Grosz's Berlin themes, but with a slightly less savage eye - though the frontispiece does set a dark tone, with its despairing and suicidal man sucking on a cigarette and cradling a bottle of brandy, with a pistol on the table and a noose hanging overhead, never mind the faceless prostitute mutely holding up her card reading Prix 300. The main action of the story takes place in the port of Brest, centering on the café-cum-brothel Au Beau Patron. Towards the end the narrative moves to Limehouse in London, before the villain Judat is hanged in Pentonville Prison (or Pontonville, as Mac Orlan insists on spelling it). Perhaps the most successful of the lithographs is the fourth, which I have called La Chance (all the titles are mine), in which a group of card-players remain enthralled by their game, while a murdered prostitute lies dying in her crib, and her slayer makes his getaway. But all of them have a great deal of  suggestive power - just look at those phallic streetlamps that illuminate the girls on the street. Another thing that strikes me about these images is the subtle organisation of space - Grosz really fills up the available picture-space with exceptionally balanced and well-thought-out compositions.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Pub à Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue à Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

A copy of Port d'eaux-mortes from Harvard College Library was included in the exhibition The Artist and the Book, 1860-1960 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1961; see the catalogue of the same title by Eleanor M. Garvey, cat. no. 129, p. 91).

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La prison de Pontonville

Lithograph, 1926

The presence of George Grosz in Paris had an electrifying effect on several Paris-based artists associated with Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco. You can trace the influence on André Dignimont, on Chas Laborde, on Marcel Vertès, on Pierre Falké. Below is just a little gallery of images from these artists from 1926-1930, which show the impact of Grosz on the French scene. In the case of Laborde especially this case could be made more strongly with other material - etchings from Rues et visages de Paris (1926), for instance. Of course all these artists were also influencing each other, and were also working in the shadow of Pascin, but I think there is an identifiable shift towards a more expressionistic vision, especially in the art of Dignimont and Vertès.

Marcel Vertès

Drypoint for Francis Carco, L'amour vénal, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Drypoint for Francis Carco, L'amour vénal, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Pierre Mac Orlan, Les jeux du demi-jour, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Pierre Mac Orlan, Les jeux du demi-jour, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Raymond Hesse, L'age d'or, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Raymond Hesse, L'age d'or, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Georges-Armand Masson, Tableau de la mode, 1926

Marcel Vertès

Lithograph for Georges-Armand Masson, Tableau de la mode, 1926

André Dignimont

Etching for Tristan Bernard, Amants et voleurs, 1927

André Dignimont

Etching for Tristan Bernard, Amants et voleurs, 1927

André Dignimont

Etching for André Beucler, Un nouvel amour, 1927

André Dignimont

Etching for Francis Carco, Bob et Bobette s'amusent, 1930

André Dignimont

Etching for Francis Carco, Bob et Bobette s'amusent, 1930

Pierre Falké

Etching for Francis Carco, Les vrais de vrai, 1928

Pierre Falké

Etching for Francis Carco, Les vrais de vrai, 1928

Chas Laborde

Etching for Jean Giraudoux, Juliette au pays des hommes, 1926

The age of elegant motoring

Lucien Boucher, Le Petit Garage, 1925
Original lithograph by Lucien Boucher (1889-1971)

As regular readers of this blog will know, I love Lucien Boucher’s lithographs. This one of a garage got me leafing through prints looking for images of the kind of cars that would have been maintained there. I found seven from the 1920s that I particularly like.


Marcel Vertès, Driving at night
Original etching, c.1925

This etching by the Hungarian emigré Marcel Vertès (1895-1961) is incredibly atmospheric, I think, with its wild swirls of inky darkness. You can tell this handsome automobile is purring its way to some illicit tryst. It’s one of a batch of prints by Vertès that I bought from a collector who in turn acquired them from the artist’s widow when his studio was dispersed. Therefore I can’t be certain of the date, but from the style and the paper I would date it to the mid-20s. I would guess it was printed by Vertès himself. I won’t write at length about Marcel Vertès here, because he deserves his own blog entry in due course.


Marcel Vertès, Prostitutes and cars
Original etching, c.1925

This second Vertès etching, from the same batch as the first, addresses a theme that was central to his work. His intimately-observed etchings and lithographs of brothels and prostitutes in the 1920s have a satirical edge reminiscent of George Grosz. The perspective of this image, looking out from the furtively-occupied back seat of a car towards a second vehicle whose driver is bargaining with a street prostitute, is as evocative as a photograph by that other Hungarian observer of the seamy side of Paris, Brassaï. The scene is probably the Bois de Boulogne.


Chas Laborde, Driving
Original etching by Chas Laborde, 1926

Chas Laborde (1886-1941) moved in the same circles as Marcel Vertès; both were friends of the writer Pierre Mac Orlan (who also wrote the text for Lucien Boucher’s Boutiques). Laborde was born in Buenos Aires, to French parents. His given name was Charles, but he always worked as Chas. With Jean-Émile Laboureur, Chas Laborde was quick to incorporate elements of cubism in his work, especially in his colour etchings for Juliette au pays des hommes by Jean Giraudoux, from which this jaunty image comes. It was printed by Roger Lacourière. Pierre Mac Orlan said that Chas Laborde – who was gassed in the trenches in WWI - died of a broken heart when he saw the German army march past on the Place d’Étoile in 1941.


Édouard Goerg, Mending a car
Original etching, 1926

In this etching by Édouard Goerg (1893-1969), it takes a while before you notice the legs sticking out from underneath the bonnet. This is an early etching by Goerg. It comes from a suite of his etchings for a black comedy, Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine by Jules Romains. 299 copies of this book were printed, of which 11 had the etchings in three states, and 28 in two states. The existence of separate suites of the definite state of the etchings is not recorded, and my suite, printed on Arches laid paper, is a real rarity. In 1913-14 Goerg studied at the Académie Ranson under the Nabis painters Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier. He was mobilised in WWI until 1919. Goerg was introduced to etching by Jean-Émile Laboureur in the 1920s, and became one of the foremost printmakers in twentieth-century France – President of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français, and professor etching at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Like Chas Laborde, this very French artist was born abroad, in Sydney, Australia.


Charles-Auguste Edelmann, Nuits des Princes
Original etching, 1927

Charles-Auguste Edelmann (1879-1950) is a more obscure figure than the others, but I like his work very much. I have etchings and drypoints by Edelmann. All three of the etchings reproduced here were made for the novel Nuits des Princes by Joseph Kessel, which dealt with East European émigrés living the highlife in post-war Paris. They were printed – as was the Goerg etching – by the master printer Robert Coulouma.


Charles-August Edelmann, The chauffeur
Original etching, 1927

Charles-Auguste Edelmann was born in Soultz-sous-Forêt, Alsace Lorraine, but settled in Montmartre, where he became a subtle chronicler of Paris in the jazz age. Charles-Auguste Edelmann studied under Gérôme and Humbert at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français and at the Union des Artistes Alsaciens.


Charles-Auguste Edelmann, Men and women in the street
Original etching, 1927