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 art of taille-douce

Following my previous post on Terry Haass and her close collaboration with the master taille-douciers at l’atelier Lacourière-Frélaut, I was delighted to hear from Antoine Rubington, the son of Norman Rubington, with further information on his father’s etchings. Antoine (himself a printmaker) tells me that all of Norman Rubington’s etchings were also made at Lacourière et Frélaut, and that this explains the technical mastery displayed. In a print studio such as Lacourière’s, the artist had the help of highly skilled and experienced artisans in all aspects of preparing the plates, biting them in acid, inking, and so on. The fact that there are usually only a few artist’s proofs of Norman Rubington’s etchings is down to cost; a struggling artist such as Norman Rubington could afford to have a few proofs printed for his own satisfaction, but not to commission an edition.

André Dignimont

Man with his hand up a waitress's skirt

Etching, 1927

Definitive state in colour

Artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Dalí, Miró, Buffet, Beaudin, and Masson all benefited from the craft skills of Roger Lacourière and Jacques Frélaut, who were the pre-eminent taille-douciers of the postwar years (a taille-doucier is a specialist in printing intaglio prints such as etchings and engravings, on a hand press from the original plate). The work of such printers has scarcely changed in centuries, and often the skills were passed down in families (two famous father and son taille-douciers of the twentieth century were Edmond and J. J. J. Rigal, and Raul and Raymond Haasen). Often, too, the taille-douciers were themselves printmakers of note.

In black-and-white

In the case of Roger Lacourière, he had been a significant figure in the Paris art world since just after the First World War. From 1919 until the Great Depression, Lacourière ran the printing atelier La Roseraie, in the building next door to the studio of another great artist and taille-doucier, Jean-Gabriel Daragnès, in the avenue Junot in Montmartre. Like Daragnès, Lacourière was both a printer and a publisher. He printed the etchings for the books published by his own Éditions de la Roseraie, and also for Les Éditions d’Art Devambez. The artistic director of both of these lists was Édouard Chimot (working from his studio nearby in rue Ampère), and the artists and writers who contributed to them were all regulars at the atelier of Daragnès, which was really the hub of the Montmartre artistic and literary scene between the wars.

In colour with remarques

In black-and-white with remarques

In black-and-white from the cancelled plate

This post celebrates the exquisite craftsmanship of Roger Lacourière with images of every known state of one of André Dignimont’s etchings for Amants et voleurs by Tristan Bernard, printed and published by La Roseraie in 1927. Dignimont (1891-1965) was one of the regulars chez Daragnès. I will probably post separately on him in due course. His etchings for Amants et voleurs are among his most remarkable achievements, showing the influence of the German Expressionists. Amants et voleurs was published in an edition of 420 copies: 20 on Japon ancien, 50 on Japon impérial, and 350 on vélin de Rives. My copy is no. 8 on Japon ancien, and although not called for on the justification page, has an original watercolour by Dignimont and a huge stack of loose prints, also on Japon. Besides the etchings in their definitive state in colour, there are four additional suites—in black-and-white, in black-and-white with remarques, in colour with remarques, and in black-and-white with cancellation marks.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

André Dignimont, Christmas
pochoir, 1943

A characteristic Dignimont scene of Christmas festivities in a maison close, hand-coloured with pochoir stencil by Maurice Beaufumé. From one of 132 separate colour suites of Dignimont's illustrations to La Belle Amour by Jean Galtier-Bossière. I hope all my readers are having this much fun today.