University of Virginia Library

1. The Livre d'Art OF THE 1920S

I should begin by explaining my choice of topic. Three years ago I
wrote a two-volume survey called The Art of the French Illustrated
Book, 1700 to 1914, which was published in conjunction
with an exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library drawn largely
from my own collection. In my Introduction I noted that the terminal
date had prevented me from dealing with my Art Deco books, which
I hoped one day to make "the basis for a small sequel to this history"
(1: xxxi). These lectures form the promised sequel.

Once I set to work, however, I discovered the drastic inadequacy of
what I had collected. Now, notable Art Deco books, especially in decorated
bindings of the period, have never been readily available for examination
even in France. Since the dispersal of the late Francis Kettaneh's
collection, which provided the backbone of the Grolier Club's exhibition
of French Art Deco illustration in 1968, they are still less accessible in
the United States. But I persisted, and with the assistance of various institutions
and private collectors, I have managed to cover the field. My
particular indebtedness is to the Spencer Collection in the New York
Public Library, the Frank Altschul Collection at Yale, the Morgan Gunst
Collection at Stanford, and the remarkable assemblage of books illustrated
by the pochoir process still in the process of formation by Charles
Rahn Fry of New York City. These holdings will allow me to display and
comment on much unique material in the form of drawings, proofs, and
especially bindings.

I can at least claim that my subject is a timely one. The rediscovery
of Art Deco in general, which has been proceeding with increasing fervor

for at least 15 years, has gradually made its impression on book collecting.
For some time past collectors and institutions concerned with
French illustrated books and fine bindings of the 1920s and to a lesser
extent the 1930s have found themselves in competition with enthusiasts
from the art world who seek these volumes as examples of the Art Deco
style. A book created by Schmied in a binding by Cretté with a lacquered
panel by Dunand or Jean Toulet's Contrerimes illustrated by Laboureur
in a binding by Rose Adler now seems as worthy of a place in their collections
as does a cabinet by Ruhlmann or a glass figurine by Lalique.
When enterprising auction houses recognized this development by including
illustrated books and bindings in their Art Deco catalogues,
collectors of Art Deco objects pushed prices to a level that was often
several times as high as that to which bibliophiles were accustomed. So
it has come about that notable Art Deco books are now vying with the
most esteemed livres de peintre at the top of the international auction
market.

These developments have had their impact on rare book sales generally.
Parisian dealers, while setting their prices as usual at a point just
below that at which no customer would consider buying, remain unexcited.
Having dealt continuously with illustrated books of the 1920s
since these volumes began to appear, they have their considered views
regarding such wares. Moreover, they know how extensive the reserve
supply of them must be. Among dealers elsewhere in Europe and in the
United States, however, there has been a disposition to move these books
up to the level established at Art Deco auctions.

This practice would be legitimate enough, given the importance of
Art Deco in the evolution of styles, if the material so offered in fact
represented it. But most French illustrated books of the 1920s were
largely untouched by Art Deco, just as many decorated morocco bindings
of the period were executed by craftsmen who continued to work
in an earlier tradition. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the abundant
productions of the time, including some of the most elaborate and
pretentious, were ill-conceived and poorly carried out. Deprived of the
sheltering cloak of Art Deco, most illustrated books of the 1920s require
to be appraised individually, with drastically lowered expectations. In
view of these conditions, a survey of the field, however tentative and incomplete,
would appear to have some practical usefulness.

My perspective is that of a collector who for many years has endeavored
to find out as much as he could about French illustrated books of
the last three centuries. Concerning the volumes of the 1920s the sources
of information for the most part are contemporary with the period itself,
since these books haven't as yet attracted much attention from modern

students. The only general survey remains Raymond Hesse's Le livre
d'après guerre et les sociétés de bibliophiles, 1918-1928 (1928). Also
helpful is volume 7 (1929), devoted to the book, of the Rapport général
de l'exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes,
Paris, 1925. For illustration the standard work is Léopold Carteret's Le
trésor du bibliophile: livres illustrés modernes, 1875 à 1945, 5 volumes
(1946-48), though Clément-Janin's Essai sur la bibliophilie contemporaine
de 1900 à 1928, 2 volumes (1931-32) is more enlightening from
a critical standpoint. On fine binding during the 1920s there has been
modern work of importance, but the only comprehensive treatment is
still E. de Crauzat's La reliure française de 1900 à 1925 (1932). Then
there are the several periodicals of the period devoted to books and book
collecting, particularly Le bibliophile, Byblis, and Plaisir de bibliophile,
and more marginally magazines of broader scope like Art et décoration
and Arts et métiers graphiques. All of these have proved useful, but of
course my main source has been the illustrated books themselves.

I propose to limit my account of the Art Deco book in France to the
1920s, or at least to the years 1919 to 1930. This decade was its heyday,
the years which saw the appearance of most of the best work of its representative
masters. Moreover, the period saw the reemergence of the
livre d'art, as the fine illustrated book for collectors was then called, on
a quite unprecedented scale. This crescendo of production led to notable
achievements as well as deplorable follies and concluded with a catastrophic
debacle. I shall thus be dealing with a self-contained episode in
the history of book collecting, an episode which embodies some of the
elements of high drama.

The world of fine illustrated books before the first World War was
flourishing but limited. Its requirements were met by perhaps 15 publishers,
and its clientele hardly extended beyond a few hundred collectors,
most of them well-to-do men of affairs. Prominent on the scene
were the Societies of Bibliophiles, under whose aegis were published
many of the best books of the time in editions of from 75 to 150 copies.
A relatively small number of illustrators, printers, and binders served
the needs of what in the perspective of later developments came to seem
almost a closed circle. Nonetheless, superb books appeared, though it is
true that a few of the most outstanding were published by outsiders such
as Ambroise Vollard.[1]

The conditions imposed by the first World War laid a virtual embargo
on the publication of livres d'art. The apparatus that produced
them fell apart, the collectors who acquired them had other preoccupations,

and even the materials necessary to their making, like fine paper,
were not available. Nonetheless, people went on reading, and by Armistice
Day four years of scrubby volumes on bad paper had built up a
powerful longing for decently produced books of any sort. Looking
back in 1929 Georges Grappe remembered how "a sort of mysterious enthusiasm
seized upon the elect and made them cherish the Book with an
almost ferocious tenderness, that symbol of `values' which, more than all
others, were at risk during the bitter conflict."[2] Among bibliophiles this
passion took the form of a hunger for livres d'art, which the small available
reserve of pre-War volumes could not begin to assuage. So it happened
that there poured into this once restricted preserve what ClémentJanin
described as "a torrent of books under which the largest private
libraries are being submerged."[3]

The hectic aspects of Paris during the 1920s which caused the decade
to be called les années folles will figure in my chronicle chiefly as they
are reflected in the work of George Barbier. Yet the temper of the age
does much to explain the conditions which governed the publication of
livres d'art. If rampant prosperity combined with a post-War release
from inhibitions to encourage the pursuit of pleasure, these factors
stimulated as well an eager desire for luxurious possessions, among them
fine books. Nor did bourgeois prudence provide an effective check, since
the soundness of the franc was an open question. One observer estimated,
indeed, that the public for livres d'art grew ten-fold after the War.[4]
Clément-Janin discerned three kinds of enthusiasts in this "prodigious
development" of book collecting: (1) major collectors prepared to spend
1000 to 5000 francs on a livre d'art limited to 150 copies or fewer, (2)
middle-range collectors who would pay up to 500 francs for a book
limited to not more than 500 or 600 copies, and (3) lesser collectors able
to spend 40 to 100 francs for mass-produced illustrated books in editions
of not more than 3000 copies (2: 152-153). Not only were these new collectors
numerous and diverse, for the most part they were also undemanding.
As long as the mandatory features of the livre d'art were
present—special paper, illustrations, and a limited edition—they were
easily satisfied.

Attracted by this large and ready market, publishers multiplied
apace, and so did the books they published. Among those protesting
against this incontinence was the art critic Jacques Deville, who permitted
himself the following tirade:

New publishers are springing up like mushrooms. So much for the time in
which they formed a closed corporation of learned men. Publishing has
opened itself up to some 50 bold apprentices who throw themselves into the
career without the faintest notion of the difficulties which must be surmounted
to achieve success: seeking out the illustrators among artists, finding
texts which suit them; ensuring that they realize the value in these texts
while respecting their own originality; laying out the plan of the book, its
architecture, and its decoration; locating suitable materials—paper, inks,
colors—and checking prices the while; choosing the printers and craftsmen
who will put these materials to use and supervising their work in detail. . . .
[Before the War Edouard Pelletan had claimed that a notable publisher
could leave behind him "a renown equal to that of great artists."] No such
ambition stirs many of these new publishers who dream of money, not reputation.
Unrestrained by modesty—or by taste, knowledge, and conscience—
they abandon themselves to a flood of publications which swamp the market.
Their only preoccupation is to sell.[5]

With the field of book illustration so vastly enlarged, many new artists
were drawn into it. These recruits were of uneven quality, as Raymond
Hesse demonstrates from the example of books with original wood engravings,
for some years after the War the kind of illustration most in
favor with collectors. Though illustrators like Louis Jou, Carlègle, and
Hermann-Paul produced work of distinction, wood engravings, which
can be printed conjointly with text, were also the least expensive adornment
that was acceptable in collectors' books, and when publishers avid
for profit employed journeymen artists, untrained in the craft, the results
were usually lamentable (pp. 150-151).

In his book of 1927 on 19th and 20th century livres d'art, Hesse drew
a devastating picture of the contemporary publishing scene. A year later,
when he wrote a volume entirely concerned with the post-War book, he
had been led by further study to this more balanced comparison of the
pre-War and post-War book:

One final element in the collecting scene of the 1920s needs to be
considered, the extent to which it was affected by speculation. Like other
valuable objects, livres d'art could be seen as a hedge against inflation. As
in our own time, a collector who bought on publication a book which

subsequently became rare and valuable could sell it for a profit. But a
dealer writing in 1927 explains why such transactions were rarely carried
out systematically. Collectors soon discovered that the price at which a
dealer would buy a book from them was only a fraction of the price at
which he would offer it for sale. Unless they could afford the time and
money required to build a library worthy of dispersal at auction, where
prices approximated the market level, the apparent appreciation of their
collection was hard to realize. Again, dealers themselves rarely purchased
livres d'art in quantity. They were expensive, and they could not
be returned for refunds like ordinary editions. Without a large capital,
stockpiling was not feasible.[7] It seems likely that the effect of actual speculation
on the rare book market of the period has been exaggerated.

Yet this is not the whole story. Even if the possessors of livres d'art
were not conscious speculators, they went on collecting in part because
they had more faith in their books than in a declining franc. This judgment
seemed to be confirmed in 1928 when the franc was devalued by
4/5ths (from 19.3 to 3.92 cents) yet the value of livres d'art did not diminish.
So it was that, despite uncertainties and reverses, the growth of
book production and collecting continued unabated. As late as 1928
Clément-Janin expressed "an absolute faith in the persistence of the
movement which has carried book collecting to its current flourishing
state." To his mind its soundness had been demonstrated during the
great monetary crisis wherein was achieved "that profound transformation,
that union of the aesthetic and the financial, . . . [which] makes contemporary
book collecting durable" (2: 197, 199).

By the winter of 1930-31, before these words were published, the
world-wide depression heralded by the Wall Street crash of 1929 had
struck France as well. In the first issue of Le bibliophile for February
1931, Marcel Valotaire wrote despairingly of "this crisis of the livre d'art,
the very idea of which weighs heavily on the mind as much of collectors
as of printers, publishers, and book-sellers" (p. 31). It had been discovered
that in these desperate times the world of rare books was doubly vulnerable.
If automobiles ceased to sell, it was because the market was saturated,
not because the product was unsatisfactory. The years since the
War, however, had seen an absurd multiplication of alleged livres d'art,
the work of untrained publishers, designers, and illustrators. While
money was plentiful, undiscriminating collectors had freely bought these
regrettable productions. But now the book trade was faced with a comprehensive
failure of confidence, with an accompanying "disgust, disdain,
repudiation by purchasers in the face of the poor, or at least doubtful

[ILLUSTRATION]

EN ÉCOUTANT SATIE

1920

MODES ET MANIÈRES D'AUJOURD'HUI

Pl. XI

PLATE 1. Robert Bonfils, plate from Modes et manières d'aujourd'hui, 9e anné, 1920,
[1922] (1.18). Reproduced from Charles Rahn Fry's copy, now in the Charles Rahn
Fry Pochoir Collection, Princeton University Library.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 2. George Barbier, plate from Albert Flament's Personnages de comédie, 1922
(2.16). Reproduced from the original in the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 3. François-Louis Schmied, text and vignette from Histoire de la princesse
Boudour, translated by J.-C. Mardrus, 1926 (3.24). Reproduced from the original in
the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 4. François-Louis Schmied, plate from La création, translated by J.-C. Mardrus,
1928 (3.30). Reproduced by permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library, Bequest of
Gordon N. Ray, 1987.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 5. Jean-Émile Laboureur, plate from Jean Valmy-Baysse's Tableau des grands
magasins, 1925 (4.27). Reproduced by permission of The Pierpont Morgan Library,
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 6. Pierre Legrain, lower doublure in his album of maquettes, 1929 (5.26). Reproduced
by permission from the original in the Spencer Collection, The New York
Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 7. Rose Adler, upper cover and spine of binding (1931) on Tristan Bernard's
Tableau de la boxe, 1922 (5.37). Reproduced by permission from the original in the
Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLATE 8. François-Louis Schmied, upper cover of binding on Le cantique des cantiques,
translated by Ernest Renan, 1925 (5.45). Reproduced from the original in the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

quality of the merchandise offered" (pp. 13-32).[8] During the early 1930s,
as publishers and bookdealers failed, illustrators and printers went without
work, and collectors saw the value of their holdings reduced to a
fraction of their cost, these recriminations became commonplace. Despite
a substantial improvement in the conditions of rare book production
and collecting in the years before the second World War, the reputation
of the illustrated books of the 1920s never entirely recovered from
the debacle of 1930-31.

The history just rehearsed makes it evident that any survey of the
livres d'art of the 1920s must begin with the question: what proportion
of these hundreds of titles (well over a thousand, indeed, if demi-luxe
volumes are included) deserves attention today? The answer is, a considerable
number, for if the period produced many bad books, it also
produced many good ones. At the risk of seeming arbitrary, I propose
several categories of worthy survivors.

Pride of place must be accorded to livres de peintre, though in fact
the decade saw the appearance chiefly of lesser works of this kind. Only
in 1929 and 1930 did the splendid series of major books with original
graphics by great painters, the glory of 20th century French book production,
really get under way. Charles-Louis Philippe's Bubu de Montparnasse
with etchings by Dunoyer de Segonzac was published in the
former year, Apollinaire's Calligrammes with lithographs by de Chirico
and Eugène Montfort's La belle enfant with etchings by Dufy in the
latter.[9] It should be noted that collectors in general were hardly more
welcoming to the livre de peintre in the 1920s than they had been before
the War. The set of their minds on this topic is exampled in some remarks
of Marcel Valotaire, then one of the most knowledgeable and influential
of writers on the livre d'art. He wrote of the designs of Laboureur
that they are

Then there were the established illustrators who resumed their careers
after the War. The most distinguished was Maurice Denis, who

pursued his serene course with a series of books in which his enchanting
drawings were engraved and printed in color with perfect fidelity by the
Beltrands. Also notable were Edgar Chahine, Paul-Émile Colin, Georges
Jeanniot, Charles Jouas, Auguste Leroux, and Bernard Naudin. To these
may be added Charles Guérin, a master of lithographic illustration who
came into prominence just after the War.

Chahine and Jouas also played important roles in the revival of
etching. Notable among the colleagues who joined them in displaying
the scenery, the architecture, and to a lesser extent the people of France,
sometimes working alone, sometimes banded together in the publications
of the Société de Saint Eloi, were Auguste Brouet, P.-A. Bouroux, André
Dauchez, Pierre Gusman, and towards the end of the decade, Albert
Decaris.

Original wood engraving was even more central than etching to the
livre d'art, not only in the illustrations of such men as Carlègle and
Hermann-Paul, but also in the more comprehensive contributions of
three artist-craftsmen who had been trained as wood engravers, FrançoisLouis
Schmied, Louis Jou, and Jean-Gabriel Daragnès. The three latter
were the leading architectes du livre of the time, that is to say workers
capable by themselves of creating all the components of a livre d'art.

As colored illustrations came gradually to predominate over those in
black and white in the middle and later 1920s, the ascendancy of Schmied
and George Barbier was confirmed, the former as the master craftsman
of wood engravings printed in color, and the latter as the supreme color
stylist, whether his designs were rendered by engraving or by pochoir.
Guy Arnoux, Pierre Brissaud, Umberto Brunelleschi, Pierre Falké, Paul
Jouve, Georges Lepape, Charles Martin, André-Édouard Marty, and
Sylvain Sauvage also stand out for their work in this line.

A number of artists took as their starting point the rejection of the
literal detail favored by most pre-War illustrators. Instead they turned
to quick, vivid sketches of contemporary life, often accompanying texts
by such new novelists as Francis Carco, Jean Giraudoux, Pierre Mac
Orlan, and Paul Morand. In this group were Gus Bofa, Chas Laborde,
Dignimont, and Vertès. Literal realism was equally repugnant to the
artists who imposed individual styles of calculated distortion on their
subjects. Laboureur was preeminent here, though he had found a formidable
rival in Alexeieff by the end of the decade.

Though the best work of all of these artists still deserves the collector's
attention, my consideration must be limited to those among them
in whose books the Art Deco style is most pronounced. The three lectures
following will accordingly center on Barbier, Schmied, and Laboureur,
with a final discourse concerned chiefly with Pierre Legrain, the master

of Art Deco binding. Along the way there will be some discussion of related
figures of lesser importance.

Since the incontestable mark of Art Deco in the livre d'art was its
emphasis on decoration as opposed to illustration, Schmied's early work,
in which the representational element is minimal, offers its purest exemplification.
In his later books Schmied supplements decoration with
illustration, though he rarely allows the latter to predominate. Abstract
decoration was not to Barbier's taste, but throughout his work representational
subjects are subordinated to decorative treatment. No doubt
his designs are sufficiently striking in conception, but they make their
impression above all by their decorative values.

The connection with Art Deco of a third kind of livre d'art, which
I shall represent through Laboureur, cannot be made so directly. The
book had an important place in the great Exhibition of Decorative and
Industrial Art held in Paris during 1925. The criterion that dictated the
choice of examples to be shown, however, was not so much their decorative
qualities as their modernity. Article IV in the general rules of the
Exhibition provided that only works of "novel inspiration and real
originality"[11] were to be admitted. The French illustrated books displayed
had been chosen primarily to demonstrate the variety of techniques
and talents of the day. In reviewing these selections the anonymous
author of volume 7 of the Rapport général of the Exhibition, that devoted
to the book, offers some enlightening comments. While according
Schmied more space than any other book-artist, he is at pains to point
out at length the surprising ways in which the decorative spirit had affected
the vision of other illustrators. "This influence has its part in the
tendencies [of the time] towards distortion, in all the liberties that an
artist takes with his subject, in the increasingly symbolic character of the
design." Moreover, as the pace of modern life grows increasingly rapid,
it has to be set down with the briefest of notations. "Accessories are
suppressed, the design is reduced to the minimum of lines needed to
render it visible at a glance."[12] Laboureur, better than any other bookartist
of the 1920s, exemplifies these characteristics.

With decorated bookbinding we are back on firmer ground. The
work of Pierre Legrain, like that of his numerous imitators, was assertively
decorative in nature. Indeed, fine binding during this period was
dominated by the growing ascendancy of the Art Deco style after its
appeal was demonstrated in the Exhibition of 1925.

With these generalities out of the way, I can turn at last to the books

themselves. My concern during the balance of this lecture will be the
steps by which Art Deco book illustration emerged during the years before
1920. If the War had not intervened in 1914, it seems likely that Art
Deco would have made its impression on book illustration without further
delay. All the elements necessary to its development were in place
when the guns of August imposed a five year intermission on this kind of
artistic activity, as on nearly all others. The groundwork had been laid
by three kinds of publications: design portfolios, magazines and albums
devoted to high fashion, and albums about the Ballets Russes or otherwise
concerned with dance and the theatre. Finally a few illustrated
books had been published in which the main features of Art Deco were
already to be found. It will be noted that the names of certain artists
recur again and again in the account which follows of these varied productions.

Perhaps Art Deco is displayed in its purest form in the design portfolios
of the 1920s. Their plates were executed by pochoir, that is to say,
they were illuminated—to use the word favored by Jean Saudé, the master
of pochoir—by water color or gouache through the use of stencils. In
conception and layout these portfolios can be traced back to the celebrated
Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, which appeared in 1856.
An important intermediate work was Eugène Grasset's La plante et ses
applications ornementales, published in two series in 1896 and 1898.
Where Jones had endeavored to classify and illustrate every type of ornament,
Grasset turned from man-made inventions to natural forms. His
plates, which were drawn by his students, continue Jones's arrangement
of several patterns to the page, and they are sometimes varied by
the superimposition of objects decorated with these patterns (a vase, a
[13] pitcher) or shaped in their image (a candlestick, a chair). In the plate
shown (first series, plate 66) the object is a mosaic bookbinding.

Grasset's portfolios are a monument to Art Nouveau, exhibiting the
various possibilities of flore ornementale. E. A. Séguy's Floréal of 1914
[14] also takes its departure from the plant, but as may be seen from plate 17
its designs are adapted with such verve and freedom that the Art Nouveau
element has virtually disappeared. Moreover, its pochoir plates, with
their subtle gradation of color, exist in a different world from the process
reproductions of Grasset's book. A plate (plate 19) from a representative
Art Deco portfolio of the 1920s affords a suitable conclusion to this topic.
[15] Natural objects are still the basis for the drawings in Edouard Bénédictus'
Variations of 1923, yet they tend increasingly towards abstract forms, and
Saudé's pochoir work, which makes use of a wide gamut of colors including
silver, is even richer than that in Floréal. I shall not be returning to

design portfolios, for they can hardly be regarded as illustrated books.
It should be stated, nonetheless, that they are both numerous and dazzling.
In comparison with their variety and brilliance, indeed, much Art
Deco illustration seems pallid and constrained. And of course their large
format makes them particularly attractive for exhibition purposes.

The first landmark in the high fashion tradition which led to Art
Deco illustration was Les robes de Paul Poiret of 1908. The great couturier,
who had left Worth's in 1904 to establish his own firm, was already
famous for the uncorsetted freedom of his novel creations, which
women everywhere found distinctive and flattering. In commemoration
of his success Poiret commissioned Paul Iribe, one of his many artist
friends, to prepare a luxurious album devoted to his work. Iribe focussed
[16] attention on Poiret's gowns by rendering them in pochoir against rudimentary
backgrounds of black and white. There is no pretence on the
part of the artist that the figures presented are anything but models.

Three years later appeared a still more sumptuous sequel called Les
choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape. When Poiret asked Lepape
to undertake the volume, the young painter brought him four designs,
charming in their simplicity, but also intended to depict models.
These are reproduced at the end of the album. After he was shown
Poiret's creations, however, he was asked to give his fancy free rein, with
varied and engaging results that go far beyond a fashion parade. None of
his drawings is like any other in conception, but all are linked in style.
Lepape renders even better than Iribe the supple elegance that was
Poiret's trademark, yet his most striking design is devoted to another
[17] house specialty, the turban. As Poiret had predicted, the album made
Lepape's reputation.

These two albums had been devoted to a single couturier, if admittedly
the best known. La gazette du bon ton, which began to appear in
1912 and continued until 1926, though with an intermission of nearly
six years following the outbreak of the War, took the whole world of
fashion as its province: Doucet, Paquin, Worth, and the rest, as well as
Poiret. At the heart of each issue were 10 pochoir plates, but there were
also essays, intended to amuse rather than to inform, on various articles
of apparel, on the accoutrements of high life, indeed on choses d'élégance
in general. There was a monthly review of theatrical costumes and settings,
as well as a column of gossip devoted to fashion and good taste.
The text of these pieces was made attractive by pochoir vignettes executed
as carefully as the plates. In sum, the magazine represented a way
of life, however rarefied and specialized.

Lucien Vogel was already known as the editor of Art et décoration

when he decided to launch a magazine which would accomplish for his
epoch what the Journal des dames et des modes had done over the years
1797 to 1839, also with colored plates as its chief attraction. Seeking bold
and daring collaborators who would see the world with fresh eyes, he
looked especially to young painters, and he found the nucleus of his staff
in Pierre Brissaud, Georges Lepape, and André-Édouard Marty, who
had studied together at the Atelier of Fernand Cormon. Their characteristic
note of neo-dandyism was caught many years later by a fellow
student, Jean Dulac. Remarking that "their personal elegance, like that
of their designs, drew willingly on the past, while not taking it very seriously,"
he went on to recall that "it was a time when there was a growing
preoccupation with putting into all the details of life a note of curious
research, when the word amusing tended to replace the word pretty. . . .
A cult of literature of the past, a decorative sense, a half-joking wish to
imbue everything with an artistic intention, [and] a sometimes ironic
taste for the portrayal of polite society made up the program of these
young artists."[18] There were other collaborators, among them Barbier,
Brunelleschi, Arnoux, and Martin, to whom Dulac's words apply with
equal force.

La gazette du bon ton from its origin was one of the most soughtafter
of fashion publications. Its success, of course, was owing principally
to its plates, which are not only records of the dress of the time but also
fresh and attractive compositions in themselves. Sometimes they have a
[19] dramatic element as well. In Lepape's design, "Le jaloux: robe du soir
de Paul Poiret" (April 1913), a pretty girl is wooed by an admirer while
her elderly protector clenches his fist in rage. The vignettes in the text
[20] are often true illustrations, as is the case with the scenes from Boris Gudonov
with which Marty illustrates an article on the Ballets Russes of
June 1913 (pp. 246-247). Altogether, the style and format of La gazette
du bon ton presage what the Art Deco book would become when freed
from the fashion straight-jacket.

A second significant fashion publication of the period was the almanac
Modes et manières d'aujourd'hui, a slim annual with 12 pochoir
plates. Each of its three pre-War volumes had a different illustrator:
Lepape in 1912, Martin in 1913, and Barbier in 1914. Their drawings
are more ingeniously elaborated than those for La gazette du bon ton.
[21] Indeed, "L'Ilot" (plate 7) in Barbier's volume may more properly be
compared with his depiction of the ballet, "Le spectre de la rose," of the
same year, so little is his focus on the bathing dress displayed and so much
on the scene of impending seduction. The essentially literary nature of

Barbier's talent is witnessed by the ease with which Henri de Régnier
invented an accompanying narrative for each of his designs.

The imposing pre-War albums devoted to dance and the theatre were
inspired for the most part by the Ballets Russes, whose Parisian triumphs
had begun in 1909. George Barbier haunted these performances, to
which in 1913 and 1914 he devoted collections of drawings, the first concerned
with Nijinsky, the second with Tamara Karsavina. These albums
have a prominent place in ballet history, but their strongest interest lies
elsewhere. Subordinating the opulence of the ballets' productions, but
conveying their strangeness and mystery, he concentrated his attention
on the principal dancers. As his fellow spectator and devotee Paul Drouot
observed, he showed, not gods in their accustomed mythological roles,
but "young men and women raised to divine status by their ravishing
beauty. You can feel them live, that is to say, love, desire, leap; they are
nothing but muscles, supple exertions, nerves, moments of rest between
violent gratifications."[22]

Nijinsky was the particular object of Barbier's admiration. Like
Francis de Miomandre, who wrote the introduction to his Dessins sur les
danses de Vaslav Nijinsky, Barbier saw him as unique among artists, "of
another essence from ourselves." In his 12 pochoir plates he showed
Nijinsky to be as much a mime as a dancer, adapting himself even in
physical appearance to each new role. So the stalwart Ethiopian slave of
[23] "Sheherazade" became the elusive boy of "Le spectre de la rose."[24]

Album dédié à Tamar Karsavina is Barbier's early masterpiece. Its
cover design pays homage to Beardsley, another master of decorative
art, and its 12 pochoir plates depict Karsavina in her principal parts.
That their purpose is again to stir the emotion and delight the eye of the
[25] viewer, not to document the performance, is demonstrated by "Le spectre
de la rose," glimpsed at the moment when the phantom lover, of whom
the young girl has dreamed after the ball, is about to disappear as the
rose drops from her hand.

Even more lavish are two further albums, Les masques et les personnages
de la comédie italienne, which was published in 1914, with 12
pochoir plates by Brunelleschi, and Sports et Divertissements, in which
the score by Erik Satie and 20 pochoir plates by Charles Martin are dated
1914, though the album seems to have appeared at a later date. In his
masked figures from an imaginary commedia dell'arte troupe Brunelle-
[26] schi emphasizes costume and setting. As "Arlequin" reveals, they are

highly decorative. Much more idiosyncratic is Sports et divertissements.
Satie invites the reader to approach the fantasies of music and design
which make up this work in a smiling mood. To discourage pedants who
decline to do so, he begins with an "unappetizing choral," into which he
has put "all that he knows about tedium." Martin's elegant, mannered
drawings for the scenes of sport and pleasure suggested by Satie's compo-
[27] sitions are in the same mocking, light-hearted vein. Witness "La balançoire."
The result is a creation which both in spirit and in style might
date from 1924 instead of 1914.

Finally, there were a few significant illustrated books in which the
Art Deco style already predominates published in 1914 or earlier. Francis
Jammes' Clara d'Ellebeuse, illustrated by Robert Bonfils, appeared in
1912; Balzac's Le père Goriot, illustrated by Pierre Brissaud, in 1913;
and Le cantique des cantiques and Makéda, reine de Saba, chronique
éthiopienne, both illustrated by Barbier, in 1914. Bonfils, Barbier, and
Schmied also had major books in progress on which they were able to
work intermittently during the War. Otherwise nothing significant was
to come of the preparations that have been described until the end of the
decade.

Indeed, the production of collectors' books of any kind over the next
four years was minimal. For the soldier-artist, even one who found inspiration
in war-time conditions, only the simplest means were available.
Yet Laboureur, for example, worked out his cubist style in makeshift
albums of wood engravings like Types de l'armée américaine en France
(1918) and Images de l'arrière (1919), where he found satisfaction in
glimpses of characters from the A.E.F. and the behind-the-lines activities
[28] of Allied soldiers. Witness a scene of black dock-workers in the former
album. Meanwhile, the publisher Meynial had revived the almanac with
the publication on Christmas day 1916 of the first volume of La guirlande
des mois. This small book is better described as a war-time keepsake than
a publication of high fashion, since soldiers back from the front share
[29] Barbier's five pochoir plates with elegant ladies. There is even an Art
Deco battle scene (p. 40). In its miniature way La guirlande des mois is
a livre de luxe, but when Meynial replaced it with Falbalas et Fanfreluches
in 1922, it was not without a deprecatory allusion in the final
volume to "the artistic character of a publication produced during the
War."[30]

If a World War had been the least propitious of all settings for illustrated
books, peace-time, when it came, promised to be the most propitious.
For Art Deco books Robert Bonfils was the artist who led the way

out of this prolonged period of arrested development. Some notice of his
early work will thus form a fitting conclusion to this account of the anticipations
of Art Deco illustration during the 1910s. Though unconnected
with the Gazette du bon ton—he had, however, studied at the Atelier
Cormon—Bonfils provided between 1912 and 1919 in five graceful and
unpretentious volumes a model for the kind of elegant and colorful illustration
that the artists of that journal were to achieve in their books of
the 1920s. Perhaps because of its seeming slightness, Bonfils' work as an
illustrator, in contrast to his work as a designer of bindings, has not yet
received its due.

After his apprentice years in Paris, Bonfils occupied himself with
painting, sculpture, and especially the decorative arts. A friend of those
days described him as "a tall young man, naturally affable, restrained in
gesture, with a grave and musical voice." He passed his days "looking
about him, plucking the flower from everything, with an elegant nonchalance.
He did not think it frivolous to paint his reveries on the leaf
of a fan."[31] From these casual beginnings he went on to a notable career
in the decorative arts which extended to designs for porcelain, clothes,
fabrics, even tapestries. But the principal focus of his activities was book
illustration and binding design.

A man of broad culture, he fell into the habit of drawing in the margins
of his favorite poems and stories, and when he turned to book illustration,
he thought of his designs as a continuation of this practice. His
first book of importance was Francis Jammes' Clara d'Ellebeuse of 1912.
Its success led in 1913 to commissions for Henri de Régnier's Les rencontres
de monsieur de Bréot and Gerard de Nerval's Sylvie, the latter
from the distinguished publisher François Bernouard, hailed by Raymond
Hesse as "one of the inspirers of the great `decorative arts effort of
1925' " (p. 146). The war deferred the appearance of these books until
1919. Verlaine's Fêtes galantes with Bonfils' designs appeared in 1915, and
"Lover's" Au moins soyez discret in 1919. Sylvie had engravings printed
in three colors; the other four volumes were illustrated by pochoir over
wood engravings printed in a single color.

Having selected slight but agreeable texts, often with 18th century
settings, Bonfils was under no obligation to individualize the figures in
them or to present these figures in scenes of dramatic conflict. Instead he
could use their activities as occasions for the sympathetic decoration of
his pages. He did this for the most part through vignettes, sometimes
serving as simple ornaments, sometimes of ampler proportions. Effortless
improvisations in appearance, they represent in fact the nicest calculations

regarding the best means to achieve his ends. Moreover, he delighted
in subtle combinations of color, which are bright and lively, but
[32] never garish. For such an approach pochoir was the ideal process. Witness
the washes by which Clara d'Ellebeuse is portrayed in her big sun-hat as
she looks out into the morning light (p. 11). Bonfils' mastery of decora-
[33] tive patterns is exampled in his headpiece to the first chapter of Les
rencontres de monsieur de Bréot (p. 1), preparing the way for Régnier's
account of a private theatrical performance.

Two albums of the period are of particular interest because they show
Bonfils working through plates rather than vignettes and as an inventor
rather than a commentator. The seven pochoir plates of Divertissements
des princesses qui s'ennuient are perhaps his most ambitious drawings,
on a scale and accorded a fullness of treatment unmatched elsewhere in
his work as an illustrator. Their subject is the amusements of three young
ladies at a country house. In keeping with his epigraph from Mallarmé,
"Princesse, nommez-nous berger de vos souris," Bonfils treats them with
indulgence, but does not disguise the languor of their luxurious lives.
Still, it is the opportunity for piquant yet harmonious Art Deco com-
[34] positions, such as "La promenade" (plate 1), which chiefly interests him.

The volume allotted to Bonfils in Modes et manières d'aujourd'hui
is dated 1920 on the title page, though it did not appear until 1922. Its 12
pochoir plates are more fully developed than is usual with the artist.
They have no theme, but their emphasis is rather on manners than on
fashion, almost leading one to question Robert Burnand's insistence that
"no designer is less documentary than Bonfils."[35] Among the aspects of
post-War French life presented are the singing of the "Marseillaise" at
a theatre, bargain day in a department store, and a family in mourning
which watches a military parade from a balcony. Like the other plates,
[36] the evening party of "En écoutant Satie" (plate 11) is an exercise in perspective.

After 1928 Bonfils illustrated few books. His time was given over to
his students at the École Estienne, where he was Professeur de Composition
Décorative, and to the writing of a learned manual on La gravure
et le livre, which was published in 1938. One may regret that this
book is devoted almost exclusively to technical matters, though the
author's predilections emerge when he praises original graphics, with
their life and spontaneity, as a quick way "for the artist to fix his
emotions" (p. 102). Bonfils is one of the most innovative and delightful
of Art Deco illustrators. Appreciation of his slim, elegant quartos is
bound to increase.