Pierre-Auguste Renoir as a book illustrator

In 1878, the publishers C. Marpon and E. Flammarion published a lavishly illustrated edition of Émile Zola’s novel L’Assommoir. The title page had a wood engraving of the central character Gervaise by Fortuné Louis Méaulle after a drawing by André Gill, but no other indication of the treasure trove of art to be found within. In fact half a dozen engravers had been kept busy interpreting illustrations by a gallery of artists, including Gill, Norbert Goeneutte, Frédéric Regamey, Henri Gervex, Daniel Vierge, Maurice Leloir, Georges Bellenger, and François Feyen-Perrin. There are 62 plates in all, and four of them are by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

La descente des ouvriers

Wood engraving by Fortuné Méaulle after Norbert Goeneutte, 1878

I don’t know who the publishers engaged to art direct this complex illustrated book, but my hunch would be Regamey, the former art director of the 1870s journal Paris à l’eau-forte, to which many of these artists (though not Renoir) had contributed. I suspect the inspiration for the curious mixture of artists and styles came from the 1876 edition of Léon Cladel’s Les Va-nu-pieds, which was published by Richard Lesclide’s Librairie de l’eau-forte. This was originally announced to be illustrated with etchings by André Gill, but in the end it was illustrated with wood engravings after Gill, Regamey, Vierge, Guérard, Somm, and various other contributors to Paris à l’eau-forte. It appears that Marpon and Flammarion liked the idea of issuing novels in serial parts, using multiple illustrators in this way (although to my mind it produces in the end a book with little visual cohesion or integrity), and they proceeded to issue similar illustrated editions of various Zola novels. So far as I know, Renoir only contributed to L’Assommoir. He probably agreed to the commission because of his friendship with Zola. According to this article Zola was involved in selecting the artists, and personally approached Renoir. Renoir also owed a debt of friendship and gratitude to the original publisher of L’Assommoir, Georges Charpentier.

La Loge des Boche

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

130 copies were printed on handmade Hollande wove paper, each containing an additional suite of the illustrations printed on china paper; these rare copies are now immensely sought-after. But there was also a trade edition on ordinary book-wove paper. This cheap paper has not stood the test of time very well, and many copies of the ordinary edition have browned and foxed. But I have been lucky enough to find a copy in which the pages are clean and fresh.

Lantier et Gervaise passèrent une très-agréable soirée au café-concert

Wood engraving by Henri Paillard after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

Renoir’s four plates are of varying quality, I think. “Lantier et Gervaise passèrent une très-agréable soirée au café-concert”, which is signed A.R. in the bottom left of the block, and was engraved by Henri Paillard, is the most successful to my eyes. The subject-matter is perfect for Renoir, and the whole scene is brimming with life.

Les filles d’ouvriers se promenant sur le boulevard extérieur

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

“Les filles d’ouvriers se promenant sur le boulevard extérieur” is also very atmospheric. It bears the signature Renoir, again in the bottom left, but there is no indication as the identity of the engraver. The original drawing in pen and brown ink over black chalk is in the Regenstein Collection in the Art Institute of Chicago. The author of the note on it in the Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies declares it “one of the most important drawings the artist produced during the years of high Impressionism.” A long-lost earlier version of the same composition, annotated by Zola, was discovered in an office safe in 2003, and sold at auction for £106,750.

Le père Bru piétinait dans la neige pour se réchauffer

Wood engraving after Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

The other two illustrations don’t seem to me to reach the same high standard. Each has its Impressionistic charm, one a cramped interior, the other a shivery exterior, but in both cases Renoir, unused to creating drawings for reproduction, has introduced so much cross-hatching that the effect is very dark, and a little confused. It’s interesting to me that in only one case of the four is the engraver credited, and that plate is, for me, much the most successful; the engraver, Paillard, was himself a noted artist. Although all the illustrations are always described as wood engravings, I passingly wondered if the other three Renoirs, and a few of the other images where no engraver is credited (such as Regamey’s "Gervaise et Coupeau", and Goeneutte’s "L’atelier de fleuristes"), might possibly be reproduced by some other process, such as Gillotage (a form of photolithography using zinc plates). It's very hard to say for sure. But I think on the whole that they probably are wood engravings - certainly, there is more detail in the published plate of Renoir's "Les filles d'ouvriers..." than there is in either of the two drawings, and all the images are reproduced purely in line, with no tone.

Below are just a few of the other illustrations to this edition of L’Assommoir, to indicate the range of talents at work on this project.

La bataille de Gervaise et Virginie

Wood engraving by Eugène Froment after André Gill, 1878

Gervaise et Coupeau, l’ouvrier zingueur, mangeaient ensemble une prune à l’Assommoir

Wood engraving after Frédéric Regamey, 1878

Les Lorilleux travaillant l’or

Wood engraving by Clément Bellenger after Georges Bellenger, 1878

Ça ne vous empêchera pas d’y passer, ma petite

Wood engraving by Albert Bellenger, 1878

L’accident du coupeau

Wood engraving by Jules Léon Perrichon after Alfred Garmer, 1878

Ce fut le zingeuer qui força Lantier à entrer

Wood engraving by Alfred Kemplen after Maurice Leloir, 1878

L’atelier de fleuristes

Wood engraving after Norbert Goeneutte, 1878

Gervaise lavant par terre dans la boutique de confiserie

Wood engraving by Fortuné Méaulle after Alexandre Auguste Rosé, 1878

Les femmes attendant la paye à la port de l’atelier

Wood engraving by Clément Bellenger after Daniel Vierge, 1878

Max Pollak: Portrait of Maria Ley

Max Pollak was born in Prague in 1886. He grew up in Vienna, where he studied printmaking under William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. He won the Prix de Rome for his etchings in 1910. In WWI Pollak was an official war artist for the Austrian army. After spending three years in Paris, in 1927 Max Pollak emigrated to the United States, settling in San Francisco, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was a member of the California Society of Etchers (winning their award in 1942, 1944, and 1945) and of the Chicago Society of Etchers (winning their award in 1942). In his American years Pollak etched scenes in Mexico and Central America, as well as California. Brilliant and accomplished as these etchings are, it is generally thought that his work in Vienna and Paris is his finest, most particularly the sensuous portraits he etched of dancers such as Maria Ley, Kitty Starling, Ronny Johansson, and Isa Marsen. These are triumphant examples of movement captured in a still image, etched in Max Pollak's typical manner with the image mainly or completely incised with a drypoint needle and the colour hand-applied to the plate for each impression, à la poupée.

Max Pollak, Maria Ley

Drypoint, 1924

Like Max Pollak, the subject of this drypoint Maria Ley emigrated to the United States, where she was known as Maria Ley-Piscator. Maria and her husband Erwin Piscator (a colleague and close friend of Bertolt Brecht) founded the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research. Among their pupils were Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Tennessee Williams, and Tony Randall.