Give peace a chance

Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1948, the artist Madeleine Melsonn took a trip to the Holy Land. The drawings she made of the landscape of the Bible and the daily life and environment of Palestinians and Jews became a portfolio of drypoints, Images de Palestine, published in September of the same year. This was a crucial year for the region, for it saw the foundation of the state of Israel on the 14th of May. At this worrying moment, when conflict has once again erupted between the Israelis and the Palestinians, I thought it might be worth taking a look at Madeleine Melsonn’s delicate drypoints, with their beautiful sense of calm, peace, and balance.


Madeleine Melsonn, Jérusalem
Original drypoint, 1948

Madeleine Melsonn was born in 1901 (some sources say 1905), and had a long career as an printmaker, with work in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France dating from 1940 into the 1980s, including a group of 29 prints by Melsonn accessioned by the BN in 1985. She died in 2000. Apparently her real name was Madeleine Suzanne Miellet; some sources refer to her as Miellet-Melsonn.


Madeleine Melsonn, Vieux quartier juif de Jérusalem
Orginal drypoint, 1948

As with so many female artists, Madeleine Melsonn remains a maddeningly obscure figure. From the 35 listings in the BN catalogue one can get a sense of the range of her work, which included an interesting-sounding Suite grecque published in 1954-55, consisting of scenes from Greek mythology; illustrations to the book of Genesis; and a series of prints of insects. In the 1940s and 50s she also illustrated a handful of limited edition books with either copper engravings (Montherlant’s Le plaisir et la peur in 1952) or wood engravings (Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes in 1946, Giraudoux’s Electre in 1950).


Madeleine Melsonn, Bassins de Salomon
Original drypoint, 1948

Images de Palestine was published by the artist herself, in an edition of 150 copies. 100 numbered copies were for sale (mine is no. 3), and 50 copies marked H.C. (hors-commerce) were reserved for the artist. It consists of 20 loose drypoints, with a page of introduction by the artist and a 4-page extract from Chateaubriand’s Voyage à Jérusalem. As is usual with such publications, the loose leaves of text and the prints are protected by a stiff case (“chemise”) and a slipcase (“etui”). The drypoints were printed by the master printer P. Thirot on B.F.K. Rives wove paper. Although a collection of prints with 4 pages of separately printed unrelated text scarcely qualifies as a book, this work is listed in Luc Monod’s great reference work, Manuel de l’amateur de livres illustrés modernes (Monod 2682). Unfortunately the details he gives are completely erroneous, and must relate to some other work entirely.


Madeleine Melsonn, Les Bergers de Bethléem
Original drypoint, 1948

So in the absence of much information about Madeleine Melsonn in reference books or on the internet, one is left face-to-face with the work itself, to stand or fall on its own merits.


Madeleine Melsonn, Béthanie
Original drypoint, 1948

The first thing that strikes me about these Images de Palestine is their sparseness. It’s not just that the landscapes and townscapes seem depopulated, but also that the artist has pared down the details of each scene to the absolute essentials. Take for instance Tombes juives à Siloé (Jewish tombs at Siloe), which is one of my favourites. Each line counts, bringing little details alive – an olive tree here, a tombstone there – but never allowing the detail to override the rhythm and balance of the image as a whole. The large areas of blank space are as important to the composition as any marks made by the drypoint needle.


Madeleine Melsonn, Tombes juives à Siloé
Original drypoint, 1948

There are a few scenes with more bustle and life to them, and of these my favourite is Les Béthlemites, a tenderly-observed view of a group of Arab women preparing food on what appears to be a roof terrace in Bethlehem. I particularly love the washing on the line in the background, with the pair of pantaloons billowing in the wind.


Madeleine Melsonn, Les Béthlemites
Original drypoint, 1948

Prints and drawings - Gustave Assire

Many artists prepare to create a print – be it an etching, engraving, lithograph or whatever – by making a preliminary drawing. In this occasional series, I will juxtapose original drawings with the prints made after them.

My first choice is an obscure artist named Gustave Assire. The pen-and-watercolour drawing below, signed and dated 1926, is a preparatory study for Assire’s classic suite of etchings of the Parisian underworld of brothels and nightclubs, Images Secrètes de Paris, with an accompanying text by Pierre Mac Orlan. This was published by René Kieffer in 1928 in an edition of 550 copies; the etchings were printed by Ducros et Colas. 450 copies were on tinted wove paper, with the definitive state of the etchings. 50 were on tinted wove paper with the etchings in two states. 50 copies were printed on Japan paper, with the 20 etchings in three states (or occasionally in two states plus a different rejected etching) plus an original watercolour study. I have copy 41 of the edition on Japan. There also exist 50 copies of a monochrome suite of reproductions of the 50 watercolours; unfortunately I’ve never seen one of these. They seem to have been sold separately.


Gustave Assire, Le choix
Original watercolour

The watercolour study shows a client making his choice in the salon of a maison close, with the madam at his side and the girls lined up before him. Assire draws it with great humour and verve; his emphasis throughout Images Secrètes is on the liveliness of the scenes he records, rather than on the tawdry side. Assire was not alone in this attitude. In the 1920s, the life of the Paris prostitute supplied much of the subject matter of writers such as Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco. 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. This titillating literary output, peppered with street slang and worldly wisdom, was in turn matched by a stream of etchings, lithographs, and drawings revealing the underbelly of Parisian life. It’s a wonder, in fact, that there was any room for clients in the brothels of Paris, such was the stream of writers and artists populating them for purposes of research.


Gustave Assire, Le choix
Original etching, only state

Judging from my copy, the watercolours were studies in their own right rather than simple preparatory sketches for the etchings. Le choix is one of the etchings where Assire had two attempts at the subject – an initial etching, reproduced above, which he then abandoned, and a second revised version. The abandoned etchings were only included in the 50 copies on Japan. Neither the first nor the second versions of the etching Le choix is based directly on the watercolour, although there are evident similarities in the stance of the girls, the bows in their hair, and the decision in all three images to view the scene from behind the line-up, so that we are looking at the client, rather than sharing his vantage-point. Why Assire was dissatisfied with his first attempt isn’t clear, but he may have felt that the composition was too crowded.


Gustave Assire, Le choix
Original etching, first state of two

One of the interesting things about these etchings is the artist’s use of extra drawings or remarques all around the border. Often remarques seem to me a rather tired and irrelevant way of “adding value” to etchings, but Assire’s remarques really do remark on the main image. They’re full of life and interest, and they offer us a series of sideways glimpses away from the central subject into the world surrounding it. Usually remarques are added as an afterthought, but in these etchings by Assire they are integral to the image, and planned as part of the overall composition from the start.


Gustave Assire, Le choix
Original etching, second and final state

Gustave Assire was born in Angers in 1870, and died in 1941. He studied under Gustave Moreau, Jean-Paul Laurens, Jean Benjamin-Constant and Fernand Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In many ways Gustave Assire was the archetypical Montmartre artist in the mould laid down by Toulouse-Lautrec. When not observing Parisian nightlife and low-life, Assire could be found sketching at the Cirque Medrano. Below are a few more of his Images Secrètes, all in the final state.


Gustave Assire, Bar de la Villette
Original etching, third and final state


Gustave Assire, Jazz-Band
Original etching, third and final state


Gustave Assire, Le Moulin Rouge
Original etching, third and final state


Gustave Assire, Le Lapin Agile
Original etching, third and final state


Gustave Assire, Maison close in Place Saint-Georges
Original etching, third and final state


Gustave Assire, Streetwalkers in Les Buttes Chaumont
Original etching, third and final state