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

Who was Laryew?

Nu III
Photogravure, 1923

The album, or portfolio, from which the following images come was published in Paris in 1923. It is a collection of 100 loose photogravures, collected between front and back boards closed with ribbon ties.

Nu XX
Photogravure, 1923

The title is Nus: Cent Photographies Originales de Laryew, and it was published by the Librairie des Arts Décoratifs.


Nu XII
Photogavure, 1923

So who was Laryew? You will look in vain for an entry on him in any photographic reference book. That is because, in deference to the naughty subject matter, it is a pseudonym. Not a very serious one, for it is simply a scrambled version of the name under which the photographer had worked all his life, Walery.


Nu LXXXV
Photogravure, 1923

Walery’s real name was Stanislaw Julian Ignacy, Count Ostroróg. He was of Lithuanian origin. He was born in 1863, the year in which his father – the original Walery – took British citizenship. The father, who was born in Lithuania, set up a photographic studio in Marseilles, then Paris, before moving to London to open a highly successful studio, first on Conduit Street, then Regent Street.

Nu XCIII
Photogravure, 1923

The son took over the business in 1890, going into partnership with Alfred Ellis until 1900, when he moved to Paris. In 2005 the National Portrait Gallery, London, staged an exhibition of work by Walery, father and son, under the title Victorian Women. All of the subjects in that show were rigidly corseted and highly respectable, unlike our daring Art Deco beauties.

Nu XLVI
Photogravure, 1923

Once he moved to Paris, our Walery added risqué studies of the girls of the Folies Bergère to his lucrative staple of high society portraits. The models for Nus are probably dancers from the Folies. Walery’s photographs of them, arranged like so many Art Deco caryatids, are now recognised as masterpieces of Art Deco photography. Walery died in 1935.


Nu VII
Photogravure, 1923

Waiting for who?

In a previous post, A Walk Along High Street, I wrote about the artist Lucien Boucher and his beautiful lithographs for Boutiques, published in 1925. Today I have had reason to look at these again, and in particular the lithograph Marbrier, with its wonderful diminishing perspective down a street lined with undertakers and monumental masons.


Lucien Boucher, Marbrier
Original lithograph, 1925

And then I started reading the short accompanying text by Pierre Mac Orlan. And found myself reading, "Entrez donc, monsieur Godeau. Nous vous attendions..." - Come in, Mr Godeau, we were waiting for you...




So now I'm dying to know if Samuel Beckett knew Pierre Mac Orlan. He almost certainly will have come across him in the Parisian literary world. Mac Orlan (1882-1970) was a friend of Francis Carco, and like him was entranced by the seamy underside of the city. Mac Orlan, by the way, is probably the only writer in the history of literature to reserve his real name – Pierre Dumarchey – for his pornographic works, while publishing all his respectable writings under a pseudonym.

Here's my attempt at a quick translation of Mac Orlan's text; corrections and improvements are welcome!

The Monumental Mason

“Good day, madame. Is your husband, the mason, here yet?”
“Come, in, monsieur Godeau. We were waiting for you, and your friend.”
The mason’s wife smiled, a warm plate in her hands.
The pallbearer Godeau introduced the young Englishman in khaki uniform.
“Monsieur Hamlet…”
The mason’s wife bowed.
She looked intently at the young Hamlet. And her amazing imagination played across her face like the glimmer of a flashlight.
What could that idiot Godeau tell her about Hamlet?


There's so much here that resonates with Beckett - not just the name Godeau (which is a genuine French surname, but here probably has a slang connotation to do with gode, a dildo, and goder, to have an erection), but words you can taste in your mouth like croque-mort. Most of all there is the identity of Godeau's khaki-clad companion, the young Hamlet - because Hamlet stands behind Waiting for Godot just as Waiting for Godot stands behind Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. And of course the funereal setting of Mac Orlan's little absurdist scene would have appealed to Beckett.

Artists you've never heard of: Marcel Roux

The second of my Artists You've Never Heard Of is the tortured figure of Marcel Roux (1878-1922), one of the most neglected artists of the early twentieth century.


Marcel Roux, Self-portrait

The anguish expressed in the art of Marcel Roux - a complex blend of asceticism and decadence - makes him a unique and haunting figure. Roux was born in Bessenay (Rhône), where there is now a Musée Marcel Roux celebrating his art. After studying at the Beaux-Arts in Lyon, he became a pupil of Paul Borel. Both men shared a passionate, almost unhealthily fervent Catholicism. In Marcel Roux this devout faith is so feverish in its intensity it resembles no artists more than the princes of darkness, Félicien Rops and Charles Baudelaire. In her essay on Roux in Les Nouvelles de l'Estampe (mai-juin 1989, no. 105), Colette E. Bidon quotes the Lyonnais historian Mathieu Varille's verdict on his work: "diabolique et apocalyptique", diabolical and apocalyptic.


Marcel Roux, L'enfant et la Mort
Original etching, 1905
This etching was first issued as plate 11 of the suite Danse macabre, in an edition of 50 signed copies. In 1925 it was reprinted from the copper plate by the Revue de l'Art ancien et moderne, to accompany an essay on Roux by Justin Godart. Most copies were on wove paper. This is one of about 20 special copies printed on Japan paper, specially printed for M. le Vicomte G. de Fontarce.

Marcel Roux was inspired to specialise in etching after seeing the etchings of Rembrandt. Rembrandt's mastery of light and shade can be seen in Marcel Roux's etchings, but they also have the phantasmagorical passion of Goya. Essentially a visionary, working within a Symbolist aesthetic, Marcel Roux was haunted by the idea of death and hell, and tormented by a sense of social injustice and human suffering. As a result, religious and social themes intertwine in his work in a mysterious and powerful way. The Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale has an etching from his 1905 suite Danse Macabre, to which the etching "L'Enfant et la Mort" belongs. This suite is regarded by the art historian Colette E. Bidon, the authority on the art of Marcel Roux, as his masterwork.


Marcel Roux, Celui qui vit en moi
Original etching with aquatint, 1908
Copy 67/300, one of 250 on Hollande Van Gelder laid paper; the first 50 copies were on Japan.

Three years later, Roux made another powerful series of dark, brooding etchings on the themes of suffering, death, and resurrection, inspired by a now-forgotten poem on the story of Lazarus, Lazare le Ressuscité, written by Louis Mercier.


Marcel Roux, La mort s'approche
Original etching with aquatint, 1908
Copy 67/300, one of 250 on Hollande Van Gelder laid paper; the first 50 copies were on Japan.

Marcel Roux's health never recovered from his experiences as a medical orderly in WWI, and he died prematurely at the age of only 44. After the war his health was too poor for etching, and he turned instead to wood engraving, planning, but not having time to execute, a series of plates Contre la guerre. Following his death in 1922, Justin Godart organised a retrospective of his work at the Salon d'Automne de Lyon, at which 117 works were displayed, including all 15 of the series Danse Macabre.


Marcel Roux, Des mains rapaces
Original etching with aquatint, 1908
Copy 67/300, one of 250 on Hollande Van Gelder laid paper; the first 50 copies were on Japan.

For more information, visit the splendid website of the Musée Marcel Roux, which is at http://ampaen.mumaro.free.fr/index.html

The bride's bouquet

I have recently acquired a very curious double set of prints (one set printed in black, the other in sanguine) issued alongside Le Bouquet de la Mariée (The Bride’s Bouquet), a collection of poems by Gabriel-Joseph Gros, the biographer of Utrillo. This was published by Marcel Sautier, Paris, in 1945, printed by Imprimerie Chaix in February of that year, six months after the Liberation of Paris. There were a total of 630 copies. I already possessed a copy of the book, one of the four hundred copies printed on pur fil d’Angoumois. These copies contain no illustrations at all, but the justification page makes intriguing mention of illustrations in the first 230 copies.


Le Bouquet de la Mariée, copy 344/630

As I now know, these 230 copies, printed on pure rag Lana wove paper, have an etching by André Derain on the cover and contain after the title page a page printed with a Denyse de Bravura drypoint, and a list of 30 artists who have ‘amicalement offert les bouquets pour la mariée’. And sure enough, in a separate wrapper is a sheaf of 30 assorted drypoints, etchings, engravings, and lithographs by various artists working in France at this period. The lithographs were printed by Mourlot or Desjobert, the etchings, drypoints, and engravings by Paul Haasen, all on Lana. The first 30 copies of the book had an extra set of the same prints printed in sanguine. As my copy is no. 5, I also have one of these.


Le Bouquet de la Mariée, copy 5/630, with an etching by André Derain

All of the images are of flowers, weddings, or a combination of the two. Apart from this reflection of the theme of the book’s title, the prints bear very little relation to the book. It seems doubtful if any of the artists knew any more about its contents than the title. The only organic connection between prints and book is the size of the sheets, which is 225 x 140 mm (eight and three-quarters by five and a half inches).


Le Bouquet de la Mariée, justification page signed by Gabriel-Joseph Gros

The artists commissioned to create original prints for this project range from the world-famous, such as André Derain, Othon Friesz, and Louis Valtat, to the completely obscure, such as Henriette le Grix and Hélène Marre. Inevitably the prints are of varying quality. There are no great works of art among them, but some charming images from artists such as André Marchand, Marie Laurencin, and André Planson. My personal favourites are those by Valtat, Laurencin, and Crotti. So without more ado, please enjoy some selected flowers from this bridal bouquet that has survived unperished since the closing months of the Second World War.


Albert André, lithograph

Albert André (1869-1954) was born in Lyon. He began life as a designer in the textile industry, but soon moved to Paris to study at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau. There, André made a close lifelong friend in the future Fauve, Louis Valtat. At the 1894 Salon des Indépendants André’s work impressed Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who introduced him to the influential Galerie Durand-Ruel, who became his dealer. In 1917 André became curator of the museum in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, now the Musée Albert André, which thanks to his contacts houses a significant collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist work. He remained a working artist, and was a prominent member of the Salon d’Automne, with which he exhibited from 1904-1944.


Pierre-Eugène Clairin, etching

Pierre-Eugène Clairin (1897-1980) was born in Cambrai, the child of a French father and an American mother. Educated in England, Clairin went to Paris to study under Fernand Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts. In WWI he became a pilot, and was seriously injured. After the war, he worked with Paul Sérusier at the Académie Ranson, as a result of which he became friendly with Édouard Vuillard.


Jean Crotti, drypoint

Jean Crotti was born in Bulle in the Canton of Fribourg, Switzerland; he was naturalised French in 1927. Crotti began his studies in Munich before entering the Académie Julian in Paris in 1901. At first influenced by Impressionism, Fauvism, and Art Nouveau, by 1910 Crotti was in the sway of Orphism and Italian Futurism. In fact Jean Crotti's career was to encapsulate a mini-history of twentieth-century art movements, for he was to play a significant role in Dadaism before turning to geometrical abstraction. Two important figures in Crotti's artistic development were Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, whom he met in New York during WWI. Duchamp was also important in Crotti's personal life, as on returning from New York with news of Marcel, Crotti met and married his sister Suzanne Duchamp.


André Derain, drypoint

André Derain (1880-1954) was born in Chatou, outside Paris. Derain was the son of a baker, and destined to become an engineer, but at the age of fifteen he started taking art lessons. By 1898 Derain was studying under Eugène Carrière, and it was at Carrière’s studio that he first met Henri Matisse, who was to be his lifelong friend. Two years later, on a train, he met and befriended Maurice de Vlaminck. As one of the founders of Fauvism, alongside Matisse, de Vlaminck, Braque. Marquet and Friesz, André Derain has an important place in the history of modern art.


Othon Friesz, drypoint

Henri-Achille-Émile-Othon Friesz (1879-1949) was born in Le Havre, Normandy in 1879. In 1934 Raoul Dufy described Othon Friesz as “the most gifted painter of our generation”. Friesz and Dufy first met at the Lycée in Le Havre, and the two became lifelong friends. They studied together at the Beaux-Arts in Le Havre, and lived and worked together in Paris, where they studied at the Beaux-Arts alongside Matisse, Marquet, Rouault, Manguin, and Camoin. From 1905-1908 Othon Friesz rented a studio alongside Matisse. Already by December 1905 he was exhibiting alongside Derain, Matisse, and Vlaminck. Painting trips with Braque to Antwerp in 1906 and to La Ciotat in 1907 added to this mix of influences, and Othon Friesz became one of the leaders of the new Fauve movement. Under the influence of Cézanne and of Picasso, Othon Friesz moved away from the bright colours of Fauvism to a more austere and classical style, based on the simplification of line. In the 1920s he taught with Fernand Léger at the Académie Moderne. As a printmaker, Othon Friesz favoured lithography for its speed, flexibility and painterly qualities, although he also made etchings, wood engravings, and drypoints such as this one, with its pronounced drypoint burr.


Édouard Goerg, etching

Édouard Goerg (1893-1969) was introduced to etching by Jean-Émile Laboureur, and became one of the foremost printmakers in twentieth-century France - President of the Société des Peintres-Gravures Français, and professor of printmaking at the Beaux-Arts, Paris. Although one of the most French artists of the twentieth century, Édouard Goerg was actually born in Sydney, Australia. Goerg studied at the Académie Ranson with Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier.


Marie Laurencin, etching

Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) was born in Paris. At the age of eighteen she began work painting porcelain in Sèvres, before returning to Paris to study art in the Académie Humbert, with the idea of improving her skills, rather than becoming an artist. But she met Georges Braque, who introduced her to Pablo Picasso. Soon she was frequenting Picasso's studio at the Bateau-Lavoir, and embarking on a passionate affair with the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. She was at the very heart of the Paris avant-garde. In 1914 she married Baron Otto von Waëtjen, and left France to live in Spain. On their divorce in 1920, Laurencin moved back to Paris, where she associated once again with Picasso and his circle. Her work can be regarded as a highly feminine take on Cubism, soft and curved where classical Cubism was hard and fractured.


André Marchand, lithograph

The painter and lithographer André Marchand (1907-1998) was born in Aix-en-Provence. Marchand first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1932. In the 1930s he exhibited with the group Forces Nouvelles, with Tal-Coat and Gruber. The formative influences on the art of André Marchand were Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse.


André Planson, lithograph

André Planson (1898-1981) was one of the leading figures in the group La Réalité Poètique (Poetic Reality), alongside Roger Limouse, Maurice Brianchon, Roland Oudot, Raymond Leguelt, Kostia Tetechkovitch,, and Christian Caillard. He taught at the Académie Julian in Paris. Planson was born at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre (Seine-et-Marne), into a family of wine-growers. His artistic ambitions were nurtured by the landscape painter Paul Meslé, and for a short period he studied under Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson.


Louis Valtat, etching

The Fauve painter Louis Valtat (1869-1952) was born in Dieppe, into a wealthy family, with a father - himself an amateur painter - who supported him in his art studies At the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, he studied in the ateliers of Boulanger, Lefebvre, and Harpignies, and possibly briefly in that of Gustave Moreau. At the Académie Julian, he made friends with fellow-students such as Bonnard, Vuillard, and his close friend Albert André. In 1895 Valtat, Toulouse-Lautrec, and André collaborated on the stage designs for an Indian drama, Chariots de terres cuites, staged at the théatre de l'Oeuvre. At his point Valtat was very close to the Nabis, but soon his experiments with violent colour were to mark him out as one of the principal Fauves.

Unillustrated here are etchings by Maurice Asselin, Eugène Corneau, André Fraye, Edmond Heuzé, Hélène Marre, Maurice Savin, Suzanne Tourte, and Louis Valdo-Barbey; drypoints by Camille Berg, Denyse de Bravura, Michel Ciry, Hermine David, Robert Lotiron, Jean Serrière, Kostia Terechkovitch, and Louis Touchagues; lithographs by René Demeurisse, Henriette Le Grix; and copper engravings by Pierre Dubreuil and Raymond Haasen.

Artists You've Never Heard Of: Tony Minartz

This is the first Artists You’ve Never Heard Of blog, the male equivalent of my Neglected Women Artists strand. The artist I have chosen is the post-Impressionist painter-etcher Tony Minartz – and if you have already heard of him, award yourself a gold star.


Tony Minartz

His full name was Antoine Guillaume Minartz. He was born in Cannes in 1870 (or possibly 1873). He was essentially self-taught, though he did benefit from advice and guidance from the Impressionist printmaker Paul Renouard. Minartz first comes to the attention of art history in 1896, when he exhibited with the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He showed with this and other Paris Salons up until 1914. What happened to him in the First World War, I don’t know. But after the war he seems to have ceased sending work to the Salons. From my limited knowledge of his work, the Parisian subjects mostly date from pre-WWI, while the post-WWI subjects tend to be of fashionable life on the Côte d’Azur. He died in Cannes in 1944.


Paul Renouard, Figurante du théatre de Drury Lane, à Londres (May Belfort?)
Original drypoint, 1905

No one would have been less suited than Tony Minartz to be a War Artist. His whole attention was focussed on life and vivacity. Death and despair – even hunger and want – are nowhere to be seen. His eye was attracted by bright lights, beautiful women in outrageous gowns and hats, and all the thrumming life of a city enjoying its wealth. This may make him a shallow artist, but it also makes him one of the most acute observers of the Belle Époque.

I have four etchings by Tony Minartz, all published by La Revue de l’Art ancien et moderne. Each of them tells a little story. The first, from 1902, is entitled Le Bal. At first glance you see a swirl of dancers, their movement captured with subtle skill. Then you notice their rapt involvement with each other. And then the penny drops: every one of the dancers is a woman. There is no clue in the title, but this is a scene from Belle Époque Paris’s flourishing lesbian subculture.


Tony Minartz, Le Bal
Original etching, 1902

The second is entitled L’Avant-foyer de l’Opéra. A fashionable lady in furs and a couture dress leaves the theatre, to be greeted by a bowing man in evening dress. Their relationship is left open to question, but one thing we know: they are not husband and wife.


Tony Minartz, L’Avant-foyer de l’Opéra
Original etching, 1903

My third Minartz etching is entitled Au Restaurant. A beautiful woman in an expensive hat, languidly holding a fan, waits while the man who accompanies her orders for them both from an attentive waiter. In the background, a violinist plays, and the female half of another dining couple bends low to display her cleavage. Once again, this is high society living, but it has nothing to do with French bourgeois morality.


Tony Minartz, Au Restaurant
Original etching, 1904

The fourth and last of my etchings by Tony Minartz dates from five years later, in 1909. It is entitled La rue de la Paix. Two richly-dressed women smirk into a shop window. Behind them, a servant or porter brings up the rear, barely able to carry the purchases they have already made.


Tony Minartz, La rue de la Paix
Original etching, 1909

From these four etchings – all I have from an output described by Benézit as ‘extrêment abondant’ – I hope it can be seen that Minartz, while chronicling the life of the rich and fashionable, did so with an acute observing eye, and a certain wry detachment. I make no claims for originality or world-shaking importance in his work. His style as an etcher owes everything to Paul Renouard and Edgar Chahine; his paintings, such as ‘Leaving the Moulin Rouge’, in the Hermitage, show the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec. But in his chronicles of the nightlife of the Belle Époque and the Années Folles, Tony Minartz both observed and added to the sum of human gaiety.


Edgar Chahine, La Promenade
Original etching, 1900

L'Art Belge

Isy Brachot, publisher of L'Art Belge

L’Art Belge was a fine art revue published by the Brussels gallerist Isy Brachot from the 1920s. Edited by Yvonne Harvengt, it was subtitled ‘revue du mouvement artistique franco-belge’. Lavishly illustrated, it was the most important vehicle for discussion of the Belgian art of the day. Unlike many art revues, L’Art Belge did not generally publish original prints. However, I have acquired a most unusual copy of the 1933 ‘numéro jubilaire’ (which was actually published in 1934). Purchasers of ordinary copies of this number would have been well-pleased with this large-format publication, hundreds of pages long, and stuffed full of interest. There are articles such as ‘Cent ans de peinture Belge’ by the critic Louis Dumont-Wilden, and hundreds of illustrations in colour and black-and-white, including important series of colour plates by Allard L’Ollivier and Camille Barthélémy. There is also a beautiful Art Deco colour lithograph on the cover by the artist Anto Carte (1886-1954), the founder of the Nervia group of Walloon artists.


Anto Carte, L'Art Belge
Original lithograph, 1934

However my copy holds a treasure-chest of secrets. It has a specially printed half-title page, which reads, ‘Cet exemplaire hors-commerce portant le numéro XVII a été specialement imprimé pour Monsieur Louis Dumont-Wilden qui a bien voulu accorder sa collaboration au present numéro de “L’Art Belge”’. How many of these special not-for-sale copies were made up is impossible to say, but I would guess around 20. What makes them special is that Isy Brachot and Yvonne Harvengt tipped into them 20 signed original etchings by major artists of the day, protected by tissue guards. As these etchings were not intended as part of the revue, there is no printed list of titles or of artists, and it has taken some interesting detective work to firmly attribute each etching; in one case I am still at a loss, and in a second still in doubt.


Yvonne Harvengt, editor of L'Art Belge

The artist I don’t recognise is the first. The etching is a fairly undistinguished portrait of a young man. The swashbuckling pencil signature is I’m sure immediately obvious if you already know it, but is impossible to read if you don’t. It might be something like Carlus. So far so disappointing.

Note added 3/5/13: Thanks to the detective work of Wally at the etsen blog, I now know the artist is Henri Mortiaux (1890-1965).


Henri Mortiaux, Portrait of a young man
Original etching, 1934

The sky begins to brighten with the next etching, a self-portrait by Isidoor Opsomer (1878-1967), really beautifully worked, rather in the manner of Anders Zorn. What seem like random loose scribbles coalesce into a haunting portrait of a man looking middle age straight in the eye. I particularly love the hat. And it’s helpfully signed I. Opsomer in a clear readable hand. Isidoor Edmond Henri Opsomer was born in Lier. His career was made at the age of 25 when he won the prestigious Prix Godecharle. In 1926 he became director of the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts d’Anvers. In 1940 he was made a baron.


Isidoor Opsomer, Self-portrait
Original etching, 1934

The next etching is an even greater hit with me, because it an impressionistic Brusssels street scene with dramatic light and shade in the Belgian Luminist manner. It too is signed with an immediately legible and recognisable name, that of Henri Logelain (1889-1968). Logelain was born in Ixelles. He studied Auguste Oleffe at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and Oleffe left a lasting influence on his style. The art of both men was shaped by their admiration for the Impressionists and the Fauves.


Henri Logelain, Vue de Bruxelles
Original etching, 1934

The next etching, so big that it is barely contained within the pages of the revue (which is 310 x 240 mm, or 12 and a half by 9 and a half inches), is a powerful study of a man hauling a barge, with a more Modernist feel. It is signed P. Paulus, identifying it as the work of Pierre Paulus (1881-1959), who was a member of the Nervia group, and a professor at the Institut Supérieur d’Art d’Anvers. Like many Belgian artists, Paulus spent WWI in London. Like Opsomer, he was ennobled, becoming Pierre, Baron Paulus de Châtelet.


Pierre Paulus, Le haleur
Original etching, 1934

The fifth print is a quietly contemplative etching with aquatint of a young woman with a traditional veil headdress, signed L. Buisseret. This was a much harder signature to read, but I got there in the end, helped by the fact that Louis Buisseret (1888-1956) was also a member of the Nervia group, alongside Carte and Paulus. He won the Prix de Rome for etching in 1920, and from 1929-1949 was the director of the Académie de Mons. And now I have just found elsewhere in L’Art Belge a reproduction of a painting by Louis Buisseret entitled Mater Beata, dated 1931; this etching is evidently a study for the central figure.


Louis Buisseret, Femme au voile
Original etching, 1934


Louis Buisseret, Mater Beata
b/w reproduction of an oil painting, 1934

Next is a study of two lay sisters or beguines. Written beneath in pencil are the words ‘par Alfred Delaunois’. I suspect that ‘par’ means that this was written by someone other than the artist, even though the signature resembles the sample signature in Benézit. However, it’s not a flamboyant signature, and it’s possible that many Belgians educated at the same period would have had similar handwriting, so I have to accept the balance of doubt. Alfred Napoléon Delaunois (1876-1941) studied under Constantin Meunier, and specialised in interiors, often of churches. He was director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Louvain.


Alfred Delaunois, Beguines
Original etching, 1934

The seventh etching is a decorous (and Deco) nude, printed in sanguine, and signed both in the plate and below in pencil by William Ablett (1877-1937). Ablett was born to English parents in Paris. Although he became a member of the Royal Academy in London, Ablett is essentially a French artist. He is best remembered today for his boudoir prints of fashionable Art Deco ladies.


William Ablett, Seated nude
Original etching, 1934

Next is another poser. It’s a stunning etching with aquatint showing a canal – quite possibly a scene in Venice, but possibly somewhere in Belgium or the Netherlands. The vendor from whom I bought this copy of L’Art Belge identified the artist as Paul Hermans (1898-1972). I would never have guessed this from the signature, and would be very grateful if anyone out there can confirm or refute it. The signature on a Hermans oil reproduced elsewhere in the revue is not unlike it, but not so similar as to settle the question.


Paul Hermans (?), Canal
Original etching, 1934


Is this the signature of Paul Hermans?

Then another easy one: a gorgeous etching of a mother nursing her baby signed and dated in the plate, Rassenfosse Nov. 1929, and stamped in the bottom righthand corner of the sheet with the artist’s studio stamp. Armand Rassenfosse (1862-1934) taught himself to draw, and learned the art of etching from an old book, before attending the Beaux-Arts, Liége. At the age of 22 he went to Paris, where he was taken under the wing of his fellow-countryman Félicien Rops. The two artists even collaborated on prints under the joint name Ropsenfosse.


Armand Rassenfosse, Maternité
Original etching, 1929

The next print offers another conundrum. It is an etching with aquatint of a landscape, and is annotated ‘par Marc Henry Meunier’ in pencil lower right. Now Marc-Henry Meunier, also known as Henri Meunier, died in 1922, so he certainly wasn’t around to hand-sign this proof in 1933 or 34. For this reason I’ve decided that this inscription was most probably not written by Meunier himself (which maybe raises another doubt about the Delaunois). I’ve listed both prints as ‘unsigned’ on Idbury Prints, to be on the safe side. Marc-Henry Meunier (1873-1922) was the son of an etcher, Jean-Baptiste Meunier, and the nephew of the sculptor Constantin Meunier.


Marc Henry Meunier, Paysage
Original etching, 1934

Another problem follows. The next etching is by the Belgian Luminist Marcel Jefferys. Jefferys died in 1924, so the same argument should apply here as with Meunier. But I can’t for the life of me see anything wrong with the pencil signature on this proof. Jefferys’ signature is very distinctive, and this looks exactly right. So the only thing I can think is that Isy Brachot must have had a stock of signed Jefferys prints, which he used to enrich the special copies of this issue of L’Art Belge. This time I’ve been able to list the print as ‘signed in the plate’, as it is signed with the artist’s Whistler-inspired monogram in the plate. But I do believe the signature is genuine. The subject is a typical one of Jefferys’ later years, showing the river Thames shrouded in fog. This melancholy scene reflects both the influence of Monet and Whistler, and Jefferys’ inner grief at the loss of his son in WWI. Marcel Jefferys (1872-1924) was born in Milan, to an English father and Belgian mother. Like Émile Claus, who greatly influenced him, Marcel Jefferys spent the war years in London, where I believe he remained until his death. Despite the puzzling matter of the signature, this etching with aquatint is my favourite of all the prints in L’Art Belge. It shows very strongly the influence of Nabis artists such as Bonnard and Vuillard.


Marcel Jefferys, Promenade
Original etching, 1934


Signature of Marcel Jefferys

The next print, an etching with aquatint depicting fisherfolk on a beach, poses no problems. It is clearly signed both in the plate and in pencil below by Manuel Robbe. Robbe (1872-1936) was taught how to etch by Eugène Delâtre. Many of his etchings were published by Edmond Sagot.


Manuel Robbe, Scène portuaire
Original etching, 1934

The next etching is Victor Mignot (1872-1944), a portrait of an old man, clearly signed and monogrammed in the plate. Here too the pencil signature reads ‘par Mignot’, so I have to assume it is not in the artist’s own hand; it looks like the same handwriting as the Meunier attribution. I’m not sure what the old man is carrying or selling; it looks like mistletoe.


Victor Mignot, Vieillard
Original etching, 1934

Then comes another poser. The vendor offered no attempt to identify the author of this etching of boats at harbour, and for a long while I was completely stumped. Then I had a brainwave and, realising that the signature in the plate was reversed, I looked at the etching in a mirror and discovered that it was by Auguste Oleffe. Oleffe (1867-1931) was one of the Brabant Fauves, He specialised in seascapes and port scenes. As a professor at the Institute Supérieur des Beaux-Arts d’Anvers, Auguste Oleffe had a huge influence on younger Belgian artists. There’s no pencil attribution on this proof, presumably because Oleffe’s reversed signature was familiar enough to make the artist’s identity obvious.


Auguste Oleffe, Marine
Original etching, 1934

Next is my second favourite print, an etching with aquatint of a canal. The signature below is that of Armand Apol (1879-1950), another of the Belgian Fauves. This wonderfully loose image has a mix of improvisation and observation that reminds me strongly of Raoul Dufy.


Armand Apol, Le canal
Original etching, 1934

Actually, is the Apol my second favourite? I’m not sure, because it has to complete with this elegant woman with her pearls and cigarette, and the pencil signature of Henri Thomas. She is the 1920s personified. Henri Joseph Thomas (1878-1972) was, like Rassenfosse, hugely influenced by Félicien Rops. The other etchings with aquatint that I have by Thomas were inspired by the risqué verse of Rops’ friend, Théo Hannon.


Henri Thomas, Femme à la cigarette
Original etching, 1934

The next etching, of two old men sitting on a bench, is by Kurt Peiser (1887-1962), a realist whose art was deeply imbued with his empathy for the poor and oppressed. It is signed in the plate and dated 1932, and also hand-signed below.


Kurt Peiser, Trimardeurs
Original etching, 1932

Next comes an etching of an Arab or Berber horseman out hawking, pencil-signed by Gustave Flasschoen (1868-1940). Flasschoen studied under Stroobant at the Académie de Bruxelles.


Gustave Flasschoen, Cavalier arabe
Original etching, 1934

Then an etching by Maurice Flament (1884-1968), signed by the artist who has also written the title, Impasse, and justified the etching 28/200. This justification intensifies my suspicion that Isy Brachot was just making up these special copies of the revue with etchings that he had lying around in stock. In other words the etchings were not specially commissioned for this purpose, and if one found another special copy it might contain quite different prints. I haven’t been able to find out anything much about Flament.


Maurice Flament, Impasse
Original etching, 1934

The next artist is Camille Barthélémy, an important post-Impressionist painter and printmaker, who studied under Nester Outers, Émile Fabry, and Jean Delville at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Elsewhere in the revue is a series of seven tipped-in colour plates of oil paintings by Camille Barthélémy, Barthélémy’s pencil-signed view through an archway brings the sequence of original prints slipped into my copy of L’Art Belge to an end. After a long journey of discovery, to be afforded a glimpse into a new world is exactly what you need.


Camille Barthélémy, Le porche
Original etching, 1934