University of Virginia Library

The Art Deco Book in France

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.

2. George Barbier

My subject today is George Barbier, the direct inheritor of the tradition
of pre-1920 illustration traced in my first lecture. By epitomizing
the more refined fantasies of the Parisian world of pleasure during the
following decade, he became the most haunting of Art Deco book artists.
From a consideration of Barbier's career I'll proceed to a discussion of
pochoir, the stencil process which he supported by employing it, despite
the prevailing disapproval of bibliophiles, in several of his major works.

Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, the most reliable source for what little information
is available about Barbier's early years,[37] relates that he was born
in Nantes on 10 October 1882 of a good bourgeois family. After leaving
school, where he took the drawing prize year after year, he studied design
with local artists. Vaudoyer speculates that the old buildings of the city
to which Auguste Lepère was to pay tribute in Nantes en dix-neuf cent
must have awakened in him a sense of the past, just as the paintings of it
well-stocked museum, where Watteau and Ingres were represented, mus
have nourished his artistic vocation. He found a patron in A. Lotz
Brissonneau, a leading industrialist of Nantes who was later to compil
the standard catalogue of Lepère's etchings and wood-engravings.

By 1908 Barbier was in Paris, working with Jean-Paul Laurens at th
École des Beaux-Arts.[38] He haunted the Louvre, applying himself particularly
to the collections of Greek antiquities. When Vaudoyer me
[39] Barbier in 1910, he found him to be "a tall, elegant blond young man
quiet and reserved" (p. 8). Indeed, Vaudoyer took him for an Englishma
especially since he then signed his drawings "E.-W. Larry." At his firs
exhibition at the Boutet de Monvel gallery during the following year hi
water colors were grouped by categories which matched his predomina
interests: Greek dancers, dancers from the Ballets Russes, and "Belles d
Moment." Pierre Louÿs, who wrote the preface to the exhibition's catalogue,
praised Barbier for having captured the Hellenic spirit with n
taint of Roman influence. "Not one of his figures could appear on a
authentic Greek vase. But they are part of the same line. It is not im
tation, it is continuation."[40]

Barbier was now fairly launched on his career. We have alread
seen how his Ballets Russes albums, his depictions of "Belles du M

ment" in the Gazette du bon ton, and his earliest illustrated books had
brought him recognition. If the War delayed for some years his wider
success, he was at least able to add to his already extensive knowledge of
the dress of past eras and to work on the illustration of further volumes
which were eventually to achieve publication. Indeed, it is unnecessary
to carry this biographical summary further, for Barbier's pattern of life
was permanently established. Recognized as one of the master decorators
of the time, he found his services in demand in many fields, but his
specialties remained theatrical costumes and settings and above all book
decoration. Three years before his death Clément-Janin wrote: "It is
by the book that George Barbier has succeeded with the great public.
The book is the most powerful transmitter of fame. The most warmly
welcomed exhibitions don't attract the attention accorded to a successful
book" (p. 146).

Of the many titles in Barbier's bibliography it will be necessary to
restrict discussion to the most considerable. Those published during the
decade of the War have been cited in the previous lecture. Beginning in
1920 his major books were:

Mention will also be made of the albums in which his work for the
theatre is reproduced and of representative titles among the several
demi-luxe volumes, typically issued in editions of 1000 copies, to which
he turned his hand.

The 16 engraved plates of Le bonheur du jour, ou les grâces à la mode,
which were colored by pochoir, are among the largest and most carefully
meditated of Barbier's designs. So ambitious was this album, indeed, that
it took him from 1920 to 1924 to complete it to his satisfaction.[41] A study
both of fashion and of manners, it was offered to those who like to link
the present with the past by comparing them even in so frivolous a matter
as costume as well as to inquiring observers of the current scene. Barbier
begins his introduction with a selective summary of fashion illustration
from the 16th century on, finding a specific predecessor for his own work

in Horace Vernet's well-known recrod of first Empire costume, Incroyables
et merveilleuses, published about 1814:

By showing the dress, the accoutrements, the interiors of his age, Barbier
expected to catch its spirit as well:

On the title page one of Barbier's distinctive cupids holds a cornucopia
from which pour such trifles as powder puffs, gloves, fans, and
masks. The early plates emphasize fashion on the pattern of Incroyables
et merveilleuses, though the manners of the day are not neglected. The
artist's mention of a "hermaphrodite couple" is borne out by the contours
and coiffures of the figures in plates 1 and 5, "Les alliés à Versailles"
[42] and "L'Amour est aveugle." Plates 6 to 9 offer stunning "interiors in the
taste of the day, walls lit-up, shadowed mirrors, irresistible divans, veiled
lights, rooms invented for idleness and pleasure by a decorator-poet,
[43] charming and uninhabitable." In "Minuit! . . ou l'appartement à la
mode" (plate 7), one should not fail to notice that it is a book by DeQuincey
which has brought the young lady to her state of comic alarm.
[44] The design is thus the natural prelude to "Chez la marchande des pavots"
(plate 8), in which androgynous opium-smokers of 1920 offer a langorous
contrast to the robust dandies of 1814 evoked by Barbier in his Intro-
[45] duction. The magnificent lacquer screen of "Le goût des laques" (plate 9)
distracts attention even from the plate's silver and golden gowns and
jade and pearl ornaments. In his final designs, composed in 1924, Barbier
goes well beyond the plan with which he began his series. No longer content
with intimate interiors, he now shows the spectacle which society
[46] provides for the public, at the beach in "Au lido" (plate 14) and at the
[47] break-up of an evening party in "Au revoir" (plate 16). Put on their
implications, these panoramas epitomize the ambiguities of a little world
whose arrogance matches its elegance.

Closely associated with Le bonheur du jour, both in date and in
conception, is Falbalas et fanfreluches, almanach des modes présentes,
passées et futures. These five volumes, which appeared between 1922
and 1926, were the publisher Meynial's lavish peacetime sequel to La
guirlande des mois. They contain 60 pochoir plates, as well as a decorative
cover design and an amusing title-page vignette for each volume.
[48] Seeking to preserve for himself complete freedom of choice, Barbier
[49] took all costume for his province. No doubt contemporary France would
most often claim his attention, but he was at liberty to "ransack the ages
and spoil the climes." The Comtesse de Noailles, who introduced the
first volume, told the artist: "You want us to travel together, you, your
readers, and I, into the hidden and always changing land of dress, and
I gladly admit that fashion, with its audacities, its fantasies, its reticences,
has the same possibilities as a voyage around the world, that it teaches
like history, sets us dreaming like the seasons, softens, delights, saddens
through love like poetry" (1: 4).

This is surely the perspective from which to appreciate Falbalas et
fanfreluches, despite the assertive frivolity of its title, for the designs go
far beyond its promised frippery and frills. Each plate is a carefully developed
tableau, though on a scale much less ambitious than in Le bonheur
du jour, which has points of interest beyond its brilliant depiction
of costume and setting. Barbier's usual subject is a love scene, some piquant
situation which he can enliven with the freshness and sensual appeal
of youth. Indeed, in his historical plates, which range throughout
Europe and North America, he rarely chooses any other. Typical is
[50] "Gentils propos" from the volume for 1922, placed in 19th century
Czechoslovakia.

The majority of Barbier's drawings are devoted to the France of his
own day, and among them are to be found some memorable inventions.
[51] Consider "Le soir" in the volume for 1926. The subject is a jazz-age
couple before a lacquer screen, but the viewer's attention is fixed on the
nearby statuette of a naked dwarf, dissipated yet vestigially fashionable,
rendered in the manner of the African sculpture which was then at the
height of its vogue. The plate has a broader humor than Barbier usually
allows himself. The best known plates of Falbalas et fanfreluches are
those depicting the seven deadly sins in the volume for 1925. Here one
finds a great theme of western iconographical tradition made at home in
Barbier's special world. "Anger" shows a modish couple quarrelling in a
formal garden, "Envy" is displayed by a maid regarding her mistress as
[52] she steps from a Rolls Royce, and "Gluttony" is etherealized into "La
gourmandise."

Falbalas et fanfreluches was the last of Barbier's books to reflect

contemporary life directly. This part of his work will always have a
special value for the unique way in which it catches the tone and mood
of les années vingt. Yet one understands why he ceased to follow this
path. Vaudoyer said of Barbier as an artist that he was not "interested in
human beings as they are, but as they were, as they might be, if not as
they ought to be" (p. 11). Selective as his view of the present had been—
only the most seductive figures, only the most elegant dress and decor—
the modern world still imposed a constraint upon him. "In the dark
backward and abysm of time," his choices were limitless. No doubt it
was a relief to him to forsake observation for revery.

Certainly his mind was filled with available images. All his life he
had frequented museums, antique shops, and bookstores. He had the
history of costume at his finger tips. The two volume catalogue of the
sale of his library offers striking testimony to his inexhaustible curiosity
and wide-ranging connoisseurship.[53] Most of its 1093 lots are made up of
illustrated books, chosen with extraordinary discrimination. The 18th
century is well represented. The 19th century is there in abundance, both
with regard to books, where Gustave Doré was a special favorite, and albums
of lithographs, where Gavarni stands out. As one would expect,
there are substantial sections on the dance and on costume. When Barbier
applied himself to brief surveys of the history of costume illustration or
of the pochoir process, he had no need to go beyond his own shelves to
write them.

Most illuminating for the student of Barbier's work, however, are the
parts of the catalogue, by far the largest, devoted to 20th century illustrated
books and literary first editions. In his introduction Jean Giraudoux
speaks warmly of Barbier's quick eye and generous admiration for
talent among the workers of his own time. So one finds most of the outstanding
illustrated books of the Belle Époque, with particular attention
being paid to Maurice Denis, Auguste Lepère, Louis Legrand, and LucOlivier
Merson. Across the Channel Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts,
and Lucien Pissarro are fully represented. Among Barbier's favored
illustrators of the 1920s were such early associates as Guy Arnoux, Pierre
Brissaud, Charles Martin, and André-Édouard Marty, as well as Alexeieff,
Chas Laborde, Daragnès, Pierre Falké, Laboureur, and Schmied.
The literary first editions include substantial runs of Gide, Giraudoux,
Louÿs, Henri de Régnier, and Valéry.

Throughout, the books are in collectors' condition. Indeed, Barbier's
copies of those in which he himself was concerned are often in decorated

morocco bindings by Canape, Cretté, or Marius Michel, with much added
material in the form of water colors, proofs, and manuscripts. A motivating
force behind Barbier's habit of taking pains with all aspects of the
books which he illustrated was his comprehension from his own experience
of what collectors value.

Of course Barbier drew on these extensive materials as an artist
rather than as a scholar. Carteret argued that his retrospective designs
appealed to "a public fond of reconstructions which captured the tone
of fashion in different epochs."[54] Yet it seems absurd to regard plates
such as those in Falbalas et fanfreluches with headings like "Switzerland,
18th century" or "Antilles, 19th century" as so many contributions to
the understanding of past modes of dress. The artist used his timetravelling
as a means of confining his imagination to particular circumstances
which would yield a satisfactory drawing. The resulting compositions
belong to Barbier-land rather than to history.

The year 1922 saw the appearance of two books illustrated by Barbier
which had their origin before the War. Of all literary texts Les chansons
de Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs enjoyed his most persistent devotion. These
prose poems, which purported to be translations from the Greek of songs
composed by a poetess of Sappho's time, were published in 1894. In 1910
Barbier adorned Lotz-Brissonneau's copy of the 1898 edition with 65
water-colors, 26 of them full page, signed "E.-W. Larry." In a letter to his
patron, after affirming his devotion to ancient Greece, he remarked of
Louÿs' work: "It is all licentiousness and beauty and I would have wished
in my drawings to convey something of the sensuality and color with
which he animates these perfect poems."[55] Commissioned by Pierre Corrard
to provide illustrations for a major edition of Les chansons de Bilitis,
Barbier immediately set about further drawings, but Corrard died in
1914, and his widow finally published the book in an edition of 125 copies
in only 1922. A handsome quarto, remarkable for its layout and typography
as well as for its illustrations, which were engraved by Schmied
and printed in color, it might have vied with Schmied's Le livre de la
jungle as an example of the sumptuous realizations which lay within the
grasp of post-War bookmakers if it had appeared three years earlier.
Certainly it contains Barbier's most varied studies of the female form.
[56] Two examples must suffice: "Les trois beautés de Mnasidika," in which
a nymph tells of the sacrifices she has made to Aphrodite for her lover

[57] (opposite p. 72), and the dance of the flowers (opposite p. 148). It is interesting
to compare with the latter Barbier's original drawing, dated
[58] 1914, one of many mounted in an album which accompanies the Altschul
copy of the book at Yale. Still a third series of illustrations by Barbier for
Les chansons de Bilitis appeared in 1929. Featuring an extended text,
acquired at the auction sale of Louÿs' manuscripts, it has 54 engravings
on wood printed in color by Pierre Bouchet.[59] Since only 25 copies were
printed, it has remained virtually unknown to collectors.

Personnages de comédie of 1922 is a still more considerable accomplishment
than the edition of Les chansons de Bilitis of the same year.
[60] Indeed, its 12 large plates, engraved by Schmied and printed in color by
Pierre Bouchet, are rivalled in Barbier's work only by those in Le bonheur
du jour. Albert Flament's text of 1914 is a diffuse meditation, halfwaking
and half-dreaming, which takes as its point of departure the great
roles of the world theatre. Barbier's vignettes have a general relevance
to the theme of acting, but most of his plates, at least one of which
dates from 1916, are simply magnificent decorative compositions. Thus
[61] Phaedra is mentioned by Flament, but not the equally evocative Greek
sorceress who receives homage from her creatures in an earlier design.
Perhaps Personnages de comédie is best regarded as a demonstration of
the cumulative richness which could be achieved by the combined talents
of Barbier, Schmied, and Bouchet.

If six years passed before the appearance of Barbier's next major
book, this does not mean that he had forsaken illustration in the interval.
His practice was to spend years over each project, returning to it from
time to time as the spirit moved him. It is true, however, that between
the end of the War and the later 1920s much of his time was claimed by
theatrical design. This new career began with Rostand's Casanova, performed
at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1919. Barbier's costumes and scenery
are recorded in an album of 1921 called Panorama dramatique: Casanova,
illustrated with 24 pochoir plates executed by Jacomet. Other successes
followed, and for a time he was the most sought-after costume designer in
Paris, recognized as the theatrical artist who better than any other had
captured the mood of the age. His work through 1922 may be seen in an
elegant album called Vingt-cinq costumes pour le théâtre which appeared
in 1927. Edmond Jaloux's discerning introduction suggests how Barbier
helped to transform the mundane atmosphere of the pre-War Paris
theatre, with its bourgeois settings for well-made plays, into "a kind of
many-colored dream" (p. 14). Jaloux found that Barbier's extraordinary
costumes—which were more than costumes, indeed, since they seemed to

have the power of imposing on the actors who wore them a state of mind
suitable to the roles they were playing—had been perfectly described
nearly a century before in Gautier's Mlle. de Maupin:

[62] Typical of Barbier's creations are Don Juan in Rostand's La dernière
[63] nuit de Don Juan and Paulette Duval in the sumptuous ballet Le tapis
persan. From the theatre Barbier proceeded to the music hall, the vastly
larger resources of which enabled him to achieve effects "of unbridled
fantasy and opulence" in such works as "Le légende du Nil" and "L'Eventail
de diamant" at the Folies Bergères.[64]

The year 1928 saw the appearance of books illustrated by Barbier set
in the two periods where his imagination moved most freely, ancient
Greece and 18th century France. In Maurice de Guérin's Poèmes en
[65] prose he returned to mythological themes, specifically to the story of the
centaur and the bacchant (p. v), in an elegant volume for which Pierre
Bouchet engraved his drawings on wood and saw to their printing in
color and Schmied provided the "maquette typographique." Verlaine's
Fêtes galantes was a more important undertaking. Some of Barbier's
drawings for this collection of poems, including that for the frontispiece,
go back to 1920, and a number of others are dated between 1923 and 1925.
In their large scale and ornate elaboration, indeed, they bring to mind his
plates for Le bonheur du jour. To study them is to be reminded that
Verlaine's poems for this volume, the second which he published, are
said to have been inspired by his reading of the Goncourts' L'Art au dixhuitième
siècle with its celebration of the pastoral paintings of Watteau,
Boucher, and Fragonard. For the most part Barbier's depictions of the
gallant life of the time have an open-air setting. Perhaps the characters
[66] Barbier assembles in his plate for "Clair de lune" (p. 3), the first poem
in the collection, best epitomize the "chosen landscapes" by which he
tried to realize Verlaine's dream-like visions. Barbier's designs are full of
[67] fantastic touches without warrant in the poet's text. In "Les ingénus"
(p. 27), for example, the lovers amusing themselves in a park on an
autumn evening do not include the fawn receiving the attentions of the
lady by the pool. Fêtes galantes is the most frequently encountered of
Barbier's major books. Strictly speaking, indeed, it has to be regarded as
a demi-luxe edition since Piazza published 1200 copies. Some 225, however,

were issued on special paper with one or two suites of the plates,
thus raising them to collector's status, and the 25 of these with original
drawings are of course in a class by themselves.

Marcel Schwob's Vies imaginaires of 1929 might have been written on
purpose for Barbier to illustrate, so directly was it calculated to appeal
to his temperament and his way of proceeding. The author selected from
history 22 figures whose personalities and stories he found piquant, most
of dubious, some of criminal, reputation. Among them were Petronius,
Paolo Uccello, Captain Kidd, and Burke and Hare. Barbier's drawings,
engraved on wood and printed in color by Bouchet, show how taken he
was by Schwob's subjects. They include headpieces, initial letters, and
tailpieces, as well as plates devoted to the 12 figures who interested him
most. While preserving the settings and costumes of their times, he makes
[68] them all inhabitants of an elegant, ambiguous country in which conventional
expectations are invariably disappointed. In a frontispiece the
muse of intimate history gazes into a globe and dictates what she sees to a
cupid. Passing by the heretical brother Dolcino, who can be taken as a
[69] mocking commentary on the saints depicted by Maurice Denis, Clodia
[70] accompanying her brother to a Roman brothel (p. 44) and Pocahontas
meeting Captain John Smith (p. 126) may be singled out among the
book's Art Deco tableaux.

This concludes the roll-call of Barbier's substantial books, except for
Les liaisons dangereuses, reserved for discussion in another context, but
something must also be said of the demi-luxe volumes which he illustrated.
The most interesting of these is René Boylesve's Le carrosse aux
deux lézards verts of 1921. Here one admires not so much the eight
plates as the scores of smaller designs with which the text is decorated,
thus following the pattern for demi-luxe books recently established by
Robert Bonfils. His vignettes provide a sprightly commentary on this
18th century fairy tale, enhanced as they are by Saudé's brilliant demon-
[71] stration of the possibilities of pochoir. The beginning of chapter 4 provides
a typical opening.

Four of the five titles which Barbier undertook between 1924 and
1931 for Mornay's series, Les Beaux Livres, are tales by Henri de Régnier,
also with 18th century settings. They hardly require comment, since their
sparse pochoir illustrations are overshadowed by his drawings for Les
[72] liaisons dangereuses. More attractive is Gautier's Le roman de la momie
of 1929, thanks in large part to the harmonious engravings printed in
color by which Gasperini rendered the artist's designs. Barbier seems to
have welcomed the opportunity offered by Gautier's Egyptian setting to
rival the middle eastern subjects which preoccupied Schmied at this time.

My account of Barbier the book-artist has emphasized the extent to

which he was a decorator rather than an illustrator. He did not see his
work as an interpretation of the successive phases of the text before him.
Instead he found in each subject which he isolated from the text an opportunity
for creating a single perfect design. Paul Valéry's quatrain has
often been quoted:

In seizing this image, no labor was too arduous for him. Indeed, ClémentJanin
relates how "he delighted in minute details, hardly to be suspected,
which yet had their place in the impression made by the whole. `Why,'
asked one of his students, `do you put into your water colors those touches
which no one sees?'—`But I,' he answered, `I know that they are there' "
(p. 136).

To this search for perfection Barbier brought formidable resources
of knowledge as well as talent. Yet no artist was ever less of a pedant. In
describing a visit to his atelier, Vaudoyer found a symbol for the relation
between his learning and his art. Three of its walls were given over to
precious objects of all sorts, Barbier's choice among the creations with
which earlier craftsmen had served beauty, and the world of art had celebrated
luxury and fantasy. The fourth wall was curtained beneath a skylight.
Barbier sat facing it, behind a table holding his brushes and paints,
"forgetful of the concerns of sedentary life. He no longer sees anything
in front of him but his own dreams. Before catching them in flight for
perpetuation on Whatman or Canson, for a moment he watches them pass
on the great screen of the sky among clouds and sunbeams" (p. 48).

Nor did his labors end with his drawings. He saw each of his books
through to its completion, supervising all aspects of its planning and production.
Clément-Janin wrote near the end of Barbier's career:

What this absorption in the details of production added to Barbier's
work can be shown from his last major book, Les liaisons dangereuses.
That he would turn his attention to Choderlos de Laclos' great novel of
sexual intrigue was inevitable. Eighteenth century France, particularly
during the decades before the Revolution, had become his favorite country
of the mind. In this instance, moreover, he was prepared to illustrate
his text rather than to use it as a point of departure for decorative compositions.
His imaginative involvement with the novel's subject can be
traced back at least to 1920, when he contributed to La guirlande des mois
certain "fragments found in the papers of the late Marquis de la Caille"
(4: 33-45). Entitled "L'Amour de plaisir ou le plaisir d'amour," these are
the mordant reflections of a cynical libertine who might have been
Laclos' Vicomte de Valmont. In 1929 and 1930 he made 20 large drawings
for the novel, as well as a number of smaller drawings for vignettes
and decorations. Though Barbier did not neglect the opportunities for
decorative treatment of setting and costume which the novel provided, he
for once submitted willingly to the straight-jacket of the illustrator, maintaining
the major characters in keeping and presenting all the big scenes
in its intricate plot, even when, as in the duel between Valmont and the
Chevalier Danceny (2: 192), they were well outside his usual range. The
resulting drawings were as comprehensive and effective as any conceived
for the novel since Charles Monnet and Mlle. Gérard collaborated in
their classic illustrations of 1796.

Unfortunately, there was the usual delay between the completion of
Barbier's designs and their appearance in book form. Barbier died in
1932, and when they were published two years later, the absence of his
guiding hand was everywhere apparent. The publisher, Le Vasseur, declared
that the dead artist had put into the book "the best of his talent,
of his personality: all his art, all his knowledge."[74] Nonetheless, he allowed
himself to print 720 copies, an edition so large as to necessitate the
use of mechanical process to reproduce the artist's designs, the colors apparently
being added by pochoir. They were also reduced in size. The
damage can be assessed by a comparison of the original drawings[75] with
[76] their reproductions. Consider the vignette facing the title page of volume
[77] 2. Barbier's line is so distorted as to impair its firmness. The harmony of
his color scheme is disturbed; there is no hint of red in the mermaid's
hair, and her scales are blue instead of green. Even more injurious are the

changes wrought in Barbier's larger compositions. As reproduced, Barbier's
conception of an early and relatively innocent visit by the Marquise
[78] de Merteuil to the bedchamber of Cécile Volanges (1: 136) is deprived of
its sensuous grace. Throughout these two volumes, even where there is
no actual misrepresentation, the bloom is gone. In consequence this
edition of Les liaisons dangereuses has never enjoyed the favor that its
drawings merit.

Barbier was a supreme decorative designer, whose art centered on the
human figure, displayed in a thousand different settings and costumes.
He had the faculty, as Valéry wrote, of embodying myth through images
in such a way that workers in mere words could only look on in awe.
These images are beautiful, but their beauty is of an enigmatic kind. In
Barbier's library were 12 volumes illustrated by Edmund Dulac and 10
by Arthur Rackham between 1906 and 1918 (lots 223-224). Yet, despite
their common preoccupation with color, to describe Barbier as a Rackham,
even if not for the nursery, would be utterly misleading. In fact, he
embodied the temper of the 1920s in much the same way that Beardsley
did that of the 1890s. He was drawn to erotic themes, particularly of an
ambiguous nature, and his sensibility enabled him to present them,
through both male and female figures, in a powerful and haunting way.
These figures make an impression beyond their sensual appeal. In an
essay on Casanova's memoirs Barbier described "the soul of Venice" in
the great adventurer's time as "at once avid and exhausted, raging and
desperate, and, under the rouge already putrefying."[79] The equivocal
nature of the sophisticated society of Barbier's time is similarly conveyed
by his compositions. Indeed, this is perhaps his truly original note.

No account of the French Art Deco book can afford to pass by pochoir
illustrations, which surely constitute the field of liveliest activity among
today's Art Deco book collectors. Consideration of this process may appropriately
be associated with George Barbier, even though the drawings
for most of his major books were rendered by wood engravings printed
in color. Pochoir was used in much of his early work, as well as for Fêtes
galantes and Les liaisons dangereuses, and in the 1920s such former
colleagues of his on the Gazette du bon ton as Arnoux, Brissaud, Brunelleschi,
Lepape, Martin, and André-Édouard Marty were among the illustrators
with whom that magazine was most prominently identified.
Moreover, Barbier became a champion of pochoir in its struggle for acceptance
among publishers and collectors of livres d'art. In assuming this
role, he wrote, he was settling

We may open the topic with Jean Saudé's Traité d'enluminure d'art
au pochoir, published during 1925 in an edition of 500 copies. Now itself
a major collector's book, it is no mere technical treatise. Instead it is at
once a manifesto asserting the claims of pochoir and a demonstration
through its own illustrations of the appropriateness of pochoir for the
livre d'art. Saudé's text is prefaced by tributes from several admirers.
Particularly to our purpose are the remarks of Édouard Bénédictus, several
of whose design albums had been colored by Saudé. He claimed that
it was Saudé's accomplishment "to make known certain new artistic
forms, such as the highly sensitive works of modern artists, which without
his methods, might have remained unfamiliar to us because they could
not be reproduced, or indeed might have come to us radically changed in
photomechanical copies" (p. 2). He also emphasized Saudé's extensive
range. In his hands pochoir "encompasses all forms of art, old and new,
in all areas of artistic and industrial activity, prints, miniatures, documentary
works, catalogues, postcards, wall decorations, fabrics, and so
many other things" (p. 4).

In his own part of the book Saudé first concerns himself with the
history of coloring by stencil, a subject which had become familiar to
him during 30 years of craftsmanship, tracing it from the Middle Ages to
the present. He then offers his social credo: that the decorative arts combined
with technology can promote humanity's well-being by bringing
beauty within the grasp of the multitude (pp. 26-27). Finally, he describes
in detail, with due attention to the refinements which a master of
the craft can introduce, how pochoir work is accomplished (pp. 35-64).

First, the water color to be reproduced is photographed. After the
colors in the original are analyzed, proofs of the photograph are lightly
printed in a neutral tone, and each color is transferred to its individual
proof. Cut-outs from very thin sheets of zinc or copper are made from
these proofs. They are placed successively on the page to be colored, and
the color is added through the cut-out by brush or other means. Saudé's
example of this crucial step is "Les roses" by Mme. Beauzée-Reynaud, in
reproducing which he employed 32 pochoirs. He shows the resulting
plate as it appeared after 5, after 10, after 25, and after 32 of these stencils.
For more complex water colors the number required could be much

larger. Given the strict control which Saudé exercised over his workers,
one understands why he could claim for pochoir that it is "the only process
which, from the first impression to the last, best interprets the artist's
original style." This is true of both large and small editions, he maintains,
"though this kind of work is seen at its best in ouvrages de luxe"
(p. 36). In his concluding pages Saudé lists some of the books containing
his work with which he is best satisfied.

The year 1925 was a turning point in the fortunes of pochoir as a
process for illustrating livres d'art. Taken together, Saudé's Traité and
his display at the great Art Deco exhibition caused influential voices to
be raised in its behalf. The writer of the section on books in the Rapport
général of the exhibition was impressed not only by the "rich polychromes"
which he showed, but also by the "limited stock of tools" which
had produced them.

In an article for The Studio of 1926, which for the most part was a
summary of Saudé's treatise, Marcel Valotaire stressed "the important
place which [pochoir] has come to occupy in the illustration of the French
artistic book" and remarked that "This victory over the conservatism of
the bibliophiles as to processes of reproduction is fully justified by the
qualities themselves of the plates thus obtained."[81] Barbier was equally
decisive in an article entitled "Pochoirs" which appeared in 1928: "Certain
critics profess to disdain pochoir as unworthy of the livre de luxe.
For my part I think unjustified this exclusion of a technique which maintains
a work of art in all its freshness, avoiding the often rather chilling
transposition resulting from mechanical processes" (p. 163).

Pochoir, or enluminure as Saudé preferred to call it, was practiced by
other notable craftsmen, three of whom should be specifically mentioned.
André Marty (not to be confused with the illustrator, André-Édouard
Marty, who often employed pochoir for his designs) had been responsible
for its renaissance at the turn of the century. He was succeeded by Daniel
Jacomet, the master of facsimile reproduction of drawings by artists from
Fragonard to Toulouse-Lautrec. Even the great lacquerist Jean Dunand
attempted illumination, as we shall see in connection with Schmied. At
the height of its employment, indeed, pochoir coloring became a considerable

industry, just as the coloring of aquatints had been in early 19th
century England.

Though Valotaire celebrated the victory of pochoir over "the conservatism
of the bibliophiles" and claimed that artists were turning to it
from wood engravings or etchings printed in color, there remained a
hard core of opposition to its use in the livre d'art. This may be exampled
from the writings of three of the leading authorities of the time: Hesse,
Clément-Janin, and Carteret, who typically made their distaste known
by implication or omission rather than direct statement. This is true, for
example, of Hesse's Le livre d'art du XIXe siècle à nos jours, in which
books illustrated by pochoir are not discussed on the ground that they
belong to the commercial rather than the bibliophilic realm.[82] In his
later Le livre d'art d'après-guerre he followed the same rule. Encountering
Maeterlinck's L'Oiseau bleu, a book with pochoir illustrations by
Lepape, he pulls himself up short: "but here we leave the livre d'art for
the colored image" (p. 86). Clément-Janin ignores pochoir in his Essai
sur la bibliophilie contemporaine de 1900 à 1928, even in chapter 11 devoted
specifically to colored illustration. Carteret included few pochoir
books in his detailed listing of outstanding titles in volume 3 of Le trésor
du bibliophile. His judgment on the technique is implied when he writes
that Barbier's work arouses enthusiasm "above all when the colors are
rendered by engravings on wood by masters like Schmied, the Beltrand
brothers or by Pierre Bouchet, capable of attaining perfection by the
closest attention to the minutiae of the printing" (3: 178).

The employment of pochoir in the livre d'art reached its apogee in
the later 1920s, and it continued to be used with some frequency during
the 1930s. When Le portique conducted a survey of the condition and
prospects of the livre d'art after the second World War, the editors' conclusion
was that, though the process had "already won the freedom of
the city, being admitted under certain conditions," some influential publishers
were inclined to insist on these conditions.[83] An account of pochoir
in 1975, describing the ateliers in which it was still practiced, tells how

it had come to be restricted to a few specialties, "le fac-similé de grande
qualité, le tirage restreint, l'oeuvre de précision scientifique, la bibliophilie,"
with the result that it was reduced to the position of a "poor
relation among present-day graphic arts."[84] The reason for its lack of
employment, however, was no longer skepticism about the process, but
the excessive cost of hand-work of any kind.

Particularly during the last ten years collectors have become increasingly
interested in examples of pochoir coloring in all of its varied applications.
There is also a lively demand for pochoir fashion plates, with
their fresh and sparkling colors, among those seeking decorative prints
to adorn their walls. In comparison with these markets, that offered by
amateurs of livres d'art may be minor, but it is not inconsequential. Long
since deflected from Barbier and Schmied, whose books illustrated with
wood engravings printed in color have soared beyond their means, they
can still pursue other notable colorists of the 1920s whose work was
rendered in pochoir. Often published in demi-luxe editions of considerable
size, these books have remained available as well as relatively inexpensive.

The most attractive of such productions are the volumes of decorative
illustrators like Arnoux, Brissaud, Brunelleschi, Lepape, Martin, and
A.-É. Marty, who had collaborated before the War in La gazette du bon
ton, and of later recruits who worked in a similar style like Pierre Falké
and Edy Legrand. Since each had a substantial and distinctive career,
they cannot be considered one by one. It must suffice to offer a few examples
from their productions, chosen to reveal the variety of subjects
which they attempted, the gamut of effects which coloring by pochoir
could achieve, and the wide range of markets at which the resulting
volumes were aimed, from popular works to livres de grande luxe.

One of the handsomest of all pochoir books is Edy Legrand's Voyages
et glorieuses découvertes des grands navigateurs et explorateurs français
of 1921. This slim folio, which is fairly ablaze with illustrations on every
page, bears no notice of limitation and was evidently published in considerable
numbers. For that reason it was not regarded even as an édition
de demi-luxe. Yet its bold designs and brilliant coloring make the free
and unstudied handling of its pochoir work seem entirely fitting, remote
as it is from Saudé's ideal. A representative page shows Jacques Cartier
[85] relating his discoveries to Francis I. Legrand's most ambitious composition,
a double page opening, depicts Lasalle taking possession of Louisiana,
with the Indian tribes making their submissions. Much more restrained
is Guy Arnoux's Les caractères of 1922, an album of 500 copies

for which he provided both text and illustrations. As the title-page shows,
the coloring is very much of the pre-War order, almost poster-like in
[86] style. Pierre Falké's wood engravings colored by pochoir make his
Robinson Crusoe, 3 volumes, 1926, one of the great books of the decade.
Though they are dotted sparingly through the more than 900 pages of
text, they give it a richness that could not have been attained by black
and white illustration. This was a livre de grand luxe, published in an
[87] edition of 151 copies. As the crucifixion scene (p. 230) shows, AndréÉdouard
Marty's illustrations for Pierre Louÿs' Aphrodite of 1936 stand
in complete contrast. Their purity and restraint make this book, of which
there were 340 copies, a model of cool elegance.

In the 1920s pochoir was often disdained by collectors swayed by accepted
bibliophilic orthodoxy. In consequence publishers of livres d'art
tended to prefer wood engravings or even etchings printed in color, particularly
for éditions de grand luxe. This a priori prejudice has long
since been dissipated, just as there is now general agreement that pochoir
illustration is far more appealing than any form of mechanical process,
with which it used to be lumped. But the question remains: what are the
merits of pochoir as compared with wood engravings printed in color?
We know that Barbier used the latter for most of his important books,
Schmied for nearly all of his. One of the interests in the review of
Schmied's work, the subject of the next lecture, will be the resources
that he commanded in comparison to those available to the users of
pochoir.

3. François-Louis Schmied

The work of few book-artists has undergone such reversals of fortune
as that of François-Louis Schmied. A Swiss who migrated to Paris as a
young man, he had first to overcome the distrust with which the French
tend to regard foreigners working among them. During the World War
he enlisted in the army as a volunteer, where the grave injuries which he
sustained caused a French critic to concede that he had "earned the right
to be called one of us."[88] Even so success came to him only as he approached
50. A "decorator-born," as his friend Dr. Mardrus called him,[89]
he then benefitted more than any other book-artist from the boom in
livres d'art. Not only did he attract wealthy and distinguished patrons,
but collectors generally joined with them in raising his numerous productions
to the peak of contemporary esteem. Yet a residue of bitterness

among rivals who had begrudged him his prosperity helped to make his
fall from grace after the economic crisis of 1930-31 all the more complete.
For decades his books, even in the most splendid copies, remained in disfavor,
until the Art Deco revival of the past 15 years caused them to regain
and perhaps surpass the position which they enjoyed in the 1920s.

Since Schmied did not achieve fame until the early 1920s, relatively
little is known of his early life.[90] The Genevan family into which he was
born in 1873 intended him for a career in business, and it was only
through application to artistic studies outside working hours that he
found his first patron, the painter Barthélemy Menn. In 1890 his parents
allowed Schmied to devote himself to original wood engraving under the
tutelage of the Swiss master, Alfred Martin, who also trained Carlègle.
From Martin he learned much about design as well, and in the Bibliothèque
Municipale of Geneva he had made a profound study of typography
and the layout of the page before he departed for Paris in 1895.

Though he was employed in that city primarily as a reproductive engraver,
he continued to draw and to experiment with original engraving
printed in color. His innovations during the first decade of the new century
included the printing of engravings in the manner of paintings with
no separation of the colors by black lines and the extensive use of gold
and silver in their backgrounds. Among those impressed by his work was
Auguste Lepère, who had raised color printing to its seeming apogee in
his editions of À rebours in 1903 and L'Éloge de la folie in 1906. "You
are going to create truly rich engraving [la gravure riche]," he told
Schmied. "I had a presentiment, while printing À rebours, of what infinite
resources might offer themselves to the painter-artist who would
have the courage to assimilate the craft of the printer-engraver."[91]

It was a good many years before Schmied bore out this prediction. In
1911 one of the leading societies of bibliophiles, Le Livre Contemporain,
commissioned a luxurious edition of Kipling's The Jungle Book and The
Second Jungle Book. The animal painter Paul Jouve was selected as its
illustrator, and Jouve turned to Schmied for engravings printed in color
of his designs.[92] As their collaboration developed, Schmied had a hand
in drawing the illustrations as well as in their engraving. Both artists
went off to the War, Jouve being mobilized, and Schmied enlisting in
the foreign legion. Severely wounded in action at Capy on the Somme,

Schmied lost his right eye and was invalided home with the military
medal.[93] He was joined in Paris by Jouve who had been serving in
Eastern Europe. The two resumed work on Le livre de la jungle, the
printing of which was at last completed in November of 1918, though
not without further vicissitudes during the bombardment of that city.

As the first major livre d'art to appear after the War, Le livre de la
jungle is a landmark book. Its layout and typography, though sober and
dignified, are undistinguished, and its more than 400 large quarto pages
seem under-illustrated when compared with Schmied's later profusion in
this respect. Nonetheless, Jouve's drawings, as completed and engraved
on wood by Schmied and printed in color on handpresses by Pierre
Bouchet, are sumptuous indeed. It cannot be determined exactly what
part Schmied had in the drawing of the illustrations. Hesse states that
Jouve "furnished only 15 finished drawings out of 90. For the rest he
provided only preliminary studies" (p. 178). The book in fact has 122
designs: 17 plates, 15 initial letters, and the rest vignettes in the text. No
doubt the initial letters, which are often abstract, were largely Schmied's
work. It would seem that he must also have been responsible for bringing
to completion a number of Jouve's sketches.

The plates, one for each of Kipling's 15 stories and two frontispieces,
are printed on heavy paper in the manner of individual prints. For the
most part these are large-scale studies of the principal characters in Kip-
[94] ling's stories: Mowgli himself; Kaa, the rock-python; Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,
the mongoose; Toomai, the elephant; and the rest. Schmied rendered
Jouve's designs with the same sort of attentive care that he had devoted
to his own pre-War engravings such as "Le chateau d'Estaing" and "Le
chataignier" which had so impressed Lepère.[95]

The vignettes of Le livre de la jungle are as interesting as the plates.
Perhaps because he engraved Jouve's designs in diverse styles over several
years, Schmied anticipated not a few of the effects which he was later to
develop for his own work. For each story there is a headpiece, an initial
letter, and usually a tailpiece, together with four or five further vignettes.
In the initial letters he made extensive use of gold in developing his Art
[96] Deco patterns. We also find him using a gold background to silhouette
Toomai the elephant against the sunrise (p. 133) and transforming a
[97] landscape into an abstract pattern by reducing it to contrasting masses
(p. 75). The illustrations to each of the stories have a dominant recurring
figure and a consistent color scheme, thus providing for unity as well as
variety.

If it was Schmied's engravings which caused Le livre de la jungle to
rank with Lepère's À rebours and the Fioretti of Maurice Denis and the
Beltrand brothers in the annals of early 20th century book decoration,
the success of its images as illustrations was owing to Jouve.[98] He had
been devoted to Kipling's Jungle Books from the time of their appearance
in 1894 and 1895. Throughout his youth he had applied himself to the
study of art and of animals. Though he had visited North Africa, his
knowledge of the creatures he depicted in Le livre de la jungle was derived
chiefly from European zoos and museums, and of course he had no
first-hand familiarity with Kipling's Indian setting. Inevitably his conceptions
for this early book, impressive as they are, seem relatively static.
During the 1920s he was able to travel extensively in the Orient, and
India, observing the wild animals that obsessed him in their native
haunts, and in 1930 he illustrated for a second time La chasse de Kaa,
one of the longer stories in Le livre de la jungle, as well as Pierre Loti's
Un pèlerin d'Angkor.

These two books may be considered out of chronological sequence,
since there will be no opportunity to return to Jouve. The first offers an
enlightening contrast with Le livre de la jungle and the second saw
Schmied again engaged in rendering the artist's designs by engravings
printed in color. Indeed, though Jouve's wider fame is as an animal
painter, these volumes, together with several others which he illustrated
between 1929 and 1937, give him an honorable place in the history of
the Art Deco book.

Of course, La chasse de Kaa is only one of the 15 stories in Le livre de
la jungle. Yet it must be granted that Jouve's second presentation of the
tale surpasses his earlier version in both vitality and sumptuousness. This
time his drawings were engraved by Camille Beltrand and printed in
color by Pierre Bouchet, who was also responsible for the volume's typography
and layout. Jouve treats the creatures of Kipling's story with far
more freedom than before. His designs impart a feeling of movement
which testifies to the artist's liberating familiarity with their behavior in
their habitat. Compare what he makes of Kaa's defiance of the monkeys
(pp. 98-99) with his conception of the same subject in Le livre de la
jungle. Jouve provides each page of the text with a wide decorative band,
in which astonishingly varied patterns deriving from python's skin alternate
with friezes of stylized jungle animals. For his part Bouchet shows
what he has learned from his years as Schmied's master-printer. Witness
the opening page of the text with its vast initial letter and lavish use of
gold. Altogether, the book has a richness that rivals Schmied's early work.

Un pèlerin d'Angkor was Jouve's final collaboration with Schmied.[99]
On this occasion the painter's explorations of Indo-China led to his
choice of a text. It is a quiet book, without the action or drama of La
chasse de Kaa, nor is its decoration from the images and motifs of the
country nearly so elaborate. Nonetheless, it has its own kind of charm,
established in the opening double-page design of the ruins of Angkor in
the twilight.

When Le livre de la jungle was finally published in 1919, it brought
Schmied wide recognition. During the previous year Léon Carteret had
issued Léandre Vaillat's L'Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune, a small book illustrated
with wood engravings printed in color from Schmied's own drawings. As
he approached 50, he felt able at last to embark on a career as an architècte
du livre, that is to say as an artist-craftsman who would undertake
by himself to illustrate, to engrave, and to print livres d'art. Indeed, he
entered into a contract with Carteret to assist in the marketing of his
productions. This came to nothing when Schmied could not avoid incurring
expenses which greatly exceeded the terms on which the two had
agreed (p. 192).

Nonetheless, Schmied had established himself in a modest atelier at
12, rue Friant, with Pierre Bouchet as his pressman and his son Théo,
soon to become his leading workman. There he had the guiding hand in
all operations from the planning of each new book to its printing on his
single handpress. Ward Ritchie, who was his apprentice in 1930-31, has
described the process by which a design became a page in one of his
books. It was first "photographically reproduced upon the end-grain surface
of a piece of boxwood." From this the engraver made the basic woodblock,
proofs of which were placed on as many further pieces of boxwood

Schmied's exclusive reliance on hand work of the highest quality made
inevitable a prolonged period of gestation for each of his books. In the
elaborate catalogue for an exhibition of his books held in New York during

1927, eight titles are listed as "in preparation," seven of which in fact
appeared over the ensuing four years (pp. 97-98). His entire operation,
indeed, was based on the attainment of perfection. Unless every detail
represented his best effort, he could not justify the small editions (from
20 to 200 copies) at very high prices in which his books typically appeared.

The earliest volumes to achieve publication from Schmied's atelier
were three for 1922 for which he had engraved the designs of other artists
and printed them in color. We have already encountered two of these,
Les chansons de Bilitis and Personnages de comédie, with illustrations
by Barbier. The third was Jean Goulden's Salonique, le Macédoine,
l'Athos. Two further works with designs by other artists, Marrakech by
Jérome and Jean Tharaud illustrated by Suréda and Rabindrinath Tagore's
L'Offrande lyrique illustrated by Jean Berque, were published in
1924 and 1925 respectively. It will suffice to glance at the last three books
before proceeding to a closer examination of the volumes of the same
period which were entirely Schmied's work. There is no difference in the
standards of craftsmanship between the two categories, but otherwise
they are quite distinct. In the former Schmied was content to establish
a pattern and carry it out consistently; in the latter the variety of detailed
inventiveness which made him a master of book decoration raises them
to an altogether different plane.

Jean Goulden was a respected friend. He, Schmied, Jouve, and Jean
Dunand joined together each year beginning in 1921 to exhibit their
work in progress at the Galérie George Petit. This painter and enamelist
had brought back from his wanderings in Greece after the War an impressive
portfolio of drawings of landscape and old buildings, such as
[100] "Athos: le monastère de Valopédie," which Schmied rendered so perfectly
in his 45 large engravings printed in color as to persuade the viewer
that he has the paintings themselves before him. Jean Guiffrey has described
the procedure which allowed the engraver-printer to achieve the
subtle variations by which he conveyed his sensibility: "On a flat tint, of
soft coloration, the various tones come to merge in such a way as to produce
the most varied and delicate harmonies. For the first time, in this
book, Schmied printed on a metallic background, on gold or on silver,
allowing it to show through in many places, thus imparting a dominant
note to the general harmony of the image" (p. 96). The Tharauds' Marrakech
held a special interest for Schmied since his father had lived for
a time in Algeria, returning to Switzerland only after the revolt, and he
engraved Suréda's drawings of North African scenery, people, and way
of life with his usual care and elegance. Yet the book had been commissioned
by the Cercle Lyonnais du Livre, whose members would not have
appreciated any radical divergence from the conventional. Schmied was

[101] able to present Jean Berque's highly mannered designs for L'Offrande
lyrique in a livelier style. Here he had a free hand, since he was his own
publisher, and both Tagore's mystical text, as translated by André Gide,
and Berque's drawings made their appeal to him. While not among his
most ambitious books, it is an engaging one.

We may turn now to the volumes which made Schmied known
throughout the western world, those in which he emerged as an artist as
well as a craftsman. Flaubert's Salammbô of 1923 does not figure significantly
in this category, since it is a small octavo, published in an edition
of 1000 copies by Le Livre, for which Schmied merely made six drawings,
engraved them, and printed them in color. Still, it offers a fine Art Deco
[102] frontispiece. The Comtesse de Noailles' Les climats of 1924, on the other
hand, is a major work. The subjects it set for Schmied were largely of
Mediterranean scenery, and they had to be presented, as with Marrakech,
in such a way as to satisfy the members of a society of bibliophiles, this
[103] time Le Livre Contemporain. Within these limits, as "La messe de
l'aurore à Venise" (p. 66) bears witness, Schmied succeeded splendidly.
Indeed, one may regard Les climats as the book in which Schmied most
appropriately invites comparison with Maurice Denis as interpreted by
[104] the Beltrand brothers. Here is the opening plate from Denis' Carnets
de voyage en Italie of 1925, a Sicilian scene engraved on wood and printed
in color. It would be invidious to choose between it and the plate from
Les climats, but it may be noted that in contrast to Denis' pastels,
Schmied's more complex engravings are characterized by deeper colors
[105] and much use of printed backgrounds of gold. In the copy at Yale Uni-
[106] versity there is a special printing of part of a plate depicting ponds at
evening (p. 6), pulled by Schmied for Frank Altschul, which demonstrates
how the full resources of his artistry could produce something unique.

If Schmied's distinctive contribution to Art Deco is hardly to be
sought in Les climats, he made Alfred de Vigny's Daphné of the same
year the Art Deco book par excellence. In an essay on fine printing for
The Fleuron of 1924, P. J. Angoulvent found the best hope for the future
in "the decorated book," and more specifically in the "abstractive power"
to which Daphné bears witness. "Modern man," he argued, no longer
seeks "descriptive painting or illustration," but instead "an intervention
of the artist . . . to help him in bringing his feelings into harmony with
those of the creator of the work."[107] This short novel concerns Julian the
Apostate in Daphne, the grove and sanctuary near Antioch, during the
period just before his death. Though the struggle between on-rushing
Christianity and dying paganism is presented with vividness, Vigny's
primary concern is the metaphysical speculations which filled the Emperor's

mind. Confronted by such a subject, Schmied in effect abandoned
representational illustration except for three plates: a panorama of the
starry sky above the columns and laurel trees of Daphne, an emblematic
sun, and a single human figure—Julian himself in profile. The final exception
is logical, for Vigny's book exists through the thoughts of this
haunted ascetic intellectual. Otherwise Schmied suggests the content and
spirit of Daphné entirely by abstract decorations.

The volume was intended at first for still another group of collectors,
this time the Société des Médecins Bibliophiles, but its costs were finally
assumed by a single member,[108] perhaps because the society felt that they
were being offered something approaching a design portfolio when they
wanted an illustrated book. Yet if Schmied's plan for Daphné was uncompromising,
the volume as it emerged from his hand is anything but
austere. Full of typographical audacities, it is also remarkable for the ingenuity
of design and the dark, rich colors of its ornamentation. What
first leaps to notice is its profusion of monumental initial letters. The
most striking of these, indeed, turns out not to be an initial letter at all.
Commenting on Julian's celebration of mind as symbolized by "the
Word," the artist made use of a daring device, beginning his page with
[109] the gigantic "V" of verbe, even though it occurs in the middle of a sen-
[110] tence. In other ornaments, of varying shapes and sizes, Schmied offers a
wide range of geometric inventions. Even the bands at the tops and bottoms
of the early pages, which at first appear identical, are found upon
examination to embody differing shot-silk effects. The brilliance and
precision with which Schmied engraved and printed his designs are
beyond praise. Silver is abundantly employed, as is a rich, glossy black.
This last component, however, was to take its toll, for the special ink,
mixed with linseed oil, which Schmied used to achieve it, eventually left
brown offsets on the facing pages in most copies both of Daphné and of
Le cantique des cantiques.[111]

In Le cantique des cantiques, completed for Christmas of 1925 as
Daphné had been for Christmas of the previous year, Schmied carried
la gravure riche to its furthest reach. Since each of its 80 pages is different
from every other, his compulsion to "load every rift . . . with ore" made
this "precious casket" of a book, as Schmied's friend Dr. Mardrus called
it (p. 33), as susceptible to detailed study as the most sumptuous illuminated
manuscript of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. The text of
[112] Le cantique des cantiques is as concrete as Daphné's is abstract, both in
the objects it describes and the images it employs—gardens and palaces,
lilies and apples, doves and sheep. Reflecting Old Testament life at its

most alluring, it offered a cornucopia of subjects for illustration. Schmied
drew back only from the depiction of the human figure, limiting himself
[113] to King Solomon and the maiden who describes herself as "black, but
comely." If this meant that he hardly touched on the erotic potential of
The Song of Solomon, he would shortly make good this deficiency in his
Arabian stories. Nor is there any lack of purely decorative compositions
[114] of a fresh and ethereal kind, often in vertical panels which look forward
to Deux contes.

Schmied seems to have organized Le cantique des cantiques with the
opening as his unit, balancing blocks of type, designs, and the unprinted
whites of the page in ever changing combinations. In comparison with
Daphné his typographical experiments were minor. If initial letters are
more numerous, they are also smaller, and hence no longer dominant.
The suave color harmonies which hold the book together are lighter and
warmer than any Schmied had previously employed. Indeed, they rival
Saudé's pochoir work in their sparkling brilliance, without sacrificing
the precision and authority which mark the best wood engraving printed
in color. The book is as joyful as it is gorgeous.

That Le cantique des cantiques represented a peak of accomplishment
even for Schmied was recognized from its first appearance. Since
only 110 copies were printed, it has always been in demand, particularly
in decorated bindings designed by the artist, and the six copies with suites
of the engravings in black and white and in color are now beyond anyone's
aspirations. With the progress of the Art Deco revival, a market has
developed even for individual leaves, much as in the case of illuminated
manuscripts, as institutions and collectors had to recognize that the book
itself may never come their way.

By the end of 1925 Schmied had attained a commanding position
among creators of the livre d'art. At the Art Deco exhibit of that year his
display had included not only Les climats and Daphné but also elements
of the as yet unpublished Cantique des cantiques. The writer who surveyed
the book section for the Rapport général was impelled thereby to
pay "special homage to the originality, the virtuosity, and the skill" which
Schmied had shown in his wood engravings printed in color, "the most
delicate adornment of the modern book," and to agree with Louis Barthou
that "from one volume to the next, his art becomes . . . more intelligent
and more profound, more vibrant with life and movement, more
ingenious, more subtle, and fuller of color" (7: 55-56). There were similar
tributes outside of France. A year later Henry L. Bullen described
Schmied as "the greatest living master of the art of the book."[115] His
maquettes for bindings, particularly those embodying lacquer panels by

his friend Jean Dunand, were soon in demand, and as the years passed
"he designed sets for the Théâtre Pigalle, tapestries for Gobelins, decorations
for the liner Normandie."[116]

Schmied's success made necessary a more ample locale for his work,
and he accordingly removed to 74 bis, rue Halle, in a retired part of
Paris towards the Porte d'Orléans. These premises have been described
by Ward Ritchie as he found them in 1930:

This detailed account may be supplemented by the more general impressions
of P.-R. Roland-Marcel, a journalist who had visited the rue
Halle two years earlier: "Order reigned. . . . The furniture and decoration
of the rooms conformed to a certain discipline unspoiled by stiffness.
All was plain and solid, with a simple charm. It was a dwelling in keeping
with the tradition of ancestors who had held firm beliefs, cut across by
the taste for renewals favored by contemporary art" (p. 150).

Befriended by Théo Schmied, described by Roland-Marcel as "a tall
quiet young man in whom both the sturdy artisan and the humorist
brimming with concentrated mischief was visible," Ritchie soon found
himself a member of the extended family which Schmied made of his
workers. "Schmied loved people," he relates, "and enveloped them in his
great enthusiasm for living" (p. 15). There was much entertaining, not
only in Paris but also at Schmied's house in the country. In return the
staff made a hero of their master, with his imposing stature, his calm
manner, his unfailing enthusiasm, and his legendary achievements.
Ritchie quotes a tribute from Taskin, Schmied's chief assistant, which
for all its Gallic floridity bears witness to the sincerity of their admiration
and devotion. In fact the way of life of Schmied and his entourage,
if one transposes it from France to England, brings to mind nothing so

much as that of Mr. Wardle and his family at Dingley Dell in The Pickwick
Papers. If George Barbier's sometimes bizarre visions derived from
solitary meditation, Schmied's equally startling decorative innovations
were composed in a setting of hard-working bourgeois contentment.

Of course Schmied also led a public life in general society. His
particular patron was Louis Barthou, a prominent political personage,
but he numbered other celebrities among his familiar acquaintances.
This part of his existence was not without its bearing on his commercial
success, for such friends in many instances bought his books, and their
support was important to him in maintaining his lavish way of life. By
1925, indeed, he had won the allegiance not only of French book collectors
but also those of other countries. In 1927 he held a major exhibition
on the premises of Arnold Seligmann at 11 East 52nd Street, New York
City, printing for the occasion an opulent catalogue of his work, which
is now itself in demand among collectors. The dealer later told Ritchie
of the prices achieved by the volumes shown, "one with a special binding
fetched $10,000 and others $4,000 and $5,000 each" (p. 25).

Though Schmied still accepted commissions which restricted his
freedom of action—books for societies of bibliophiles, for example, or
volumes in which his contribution was primarily to engrave and print
in color the designs of other artists—he could now experiment with entire
freedom when he chose to do so. Among his boldest efforts was Oscar
Wilde's Deux contes, which appeared in April of 1926 in an edition of
162 copies, with a further 20 copies in an English version entitled Two
Tales. Not only was this volume published through the "friendly initiative"
of a group of friends, which included Louis Barthou and Frank
Altschul, but it was sure of a ready sale at a formidable price among the
widening circle of collectors in whose eyes Schmied could do no wrong.

The five large designs in this substantial quarto, one for the cover
and two for each of the stories, are relatively conventional. That depict-
[117] ing the statue of the Happy Prince is representative. But Schmied's chief
concern was with his vignettes, one of which adorns each of his 54 pages
of text. These are bands five-eighths of an inch across, the length of the
page for "The Happy Prince" and its width for "The Rose and the
Nightingale." Schmied made it clear that they are intended to illustrate
as well as decorate by including a table which gives the subject of each
[118] engraving. That the band beginning the second story represents "the
student and the nightingale" would not be readily apparent without this
assistance. Particularly in his designs for "The Happy Prince," however,
he comes much closer to his objective; indeed, some of them rise triumphantly
above the Procrustean limitations which he has imposed upon

himself. Certainly Deux contes is a notable Art Deco book, the selective
elegance of which stands in marked contrast to the sumptuous profusion
of Le cantique des cantiques.

Les ballades françaises of 1927, published in 162 copies for the Cercle
Lyonnais du Livre, may be regarded as the counterpart from Schmied's
machine presses of Les climats of 1924, which was printed on his handpress.
For each of its 26 plates the artist began with one of Paul Fort's
poetic tributes to the mountains, forests, plains, and seas of France, proceeding
to impose on this conception a decorative pattern of his own
[119] devising. In a typical design of a stream winding through a dusky wood
he realizes the "eternal melancholy" which the poet had found in the
scene. The plates are complemented by vignettes chiefly in the form of
[120] bands which are much wider than those in Deux contes, vertical for the
four section headings, otherwise horizontal. For Schmied, the typography
and layout are relatively conventional. Though a supremely competent
piece of bookmaking, Les ballades françaises cannot be counted among
Schmied's more personal statements.

When the printing of Les douze césars of Suetonius was finally
achieved in December of 1928, one of Schmied's most prolonged enterprises
was brought to its completion. The colophon records that "the
plates and ornaments of the book were exhibited, along with the maquette
of the text, at the George Petit gallery, 8 rue de la Sèze, in December,
1922." In the interval it may well have come to seem task-work to
Schmied and his helpers. Nonetheless, the portrait frontispieces and
emblematic tailpieces to the 12 chapters help to redeem its somewhat
[121] crowded pages. The plate of Nero (before p. ccxiii) is typical. It will be
remembered that Schmied also engraved and printed in color at the end
of the decade two books with illustrations by George Barbier (Maurice
de Guérin's Poèmes en prose of 1928 and Marcel Schwob's Les vies imaginaires
of 1929) and two with illustrations by Paul Jouve (La Fontaine's
Fables of 1929 and Pierre Loti's Un pèlerin d'Angkor of 1930).

I have reserved for discussion as a group the eight books in which
Schmied collaborated with Dr. J.-C. Mardrus. This somewhat mysterious
savant, best known for his translation of The Arabian Nights, had much
to offer the artist. Théo Schmied wrote in 1930: "There is a true Arabian
Sheikh in my father. He found in the reading of Mille nuits et une nuit
a savoury description of that eastern life. His tastes and that reading gave
rise to his friendship with J.-C. Mardrus who revealed so much to him."[122]
That Mardrus also appealed to the side of Schmied's mind which took
satisfaction in the abstract decoration of Daphné is confirmed by the long

essay which he contributed to the catalogue of Schmied's New York exhibition.
After discounting the advertising function of this statement,
the reader will find it by turns enlightening and impenetrable. Mardrus's
comments on Schmied's individual books are sometimes valuable, since
he had the advantage of working closely with the artist, but the philosophic
pretensions of the context in which they are presented are less
easy to accept. For Schmied, however, this sort of discourse was evidently
of a piece with the profundities which he glimpsed in Mardrus's translations
in La création and Le livre de la vérité de parole.

At any rate, the first fruits of their alliance were a notable success.
These were the three books which Schmied made out of Mardrus's translations
from The Arabian Nights: Histoire de la princesse Boudour of
1926 and the two separate and distinct editions of Histoire charmante de
l'adolescente Sucre d'Amour, both of 1927. In the Histoire de la princesse
Boudour Schmied for the first time did not color his own designs. Instead
he sent them for coloring after his originals to the workshop of the great
lacquerist of the age, Jean Dunand, with whom he was also collaborating
at the time on bindings. The story of Princess Boudour and Prince
Kamaralzamân has a variety of erotic episodes and allusions, many of
which are explicitly realized by Schmied. For the most part his 60 large
[123] designs depict one or two figures, presented in the style of Persian
miniatures, but there are also other subjects—a royal palace, a ship at sea,
birds of prey. The text is ornamented with headpieces, bands, tailpieces,
and initial letters, as well as smaller decorations in abundance, which en-
[124] rich every page. In the vignette shown two supernatural figures dispute
over Princess Boudour. In a page of text which includes a decorative
[125] panel featuring a harp, it is related how an attendant sings to Kamaralzamân
of the beauties of his Princess. Dunand's coloring endows this profusion
of illustration and ornament with a freshness and limpidity which
Saudé himself hardly surpassed. The book's limitation to 20 copies has
had the effect of making it inaccessible even in the world's great libraries.
Otherwise it would long since have become well known to amateurs of
illustrated books.

The Histoire de la princesse Boudour was followed in 1927 by
Mardrus' translation of an unpublished story from The Arabian Nights
called Histoire charmante de l'adolescente Sucre d'Amour. This tale of
the adventures of an orphaned daughter is also of an erotic cast. Once
more Schmied's engravings from his own designs were colored by Dunand.
The limitation was to 25 copies, and a larger format and a more
open type page were employed. There are 71 substantial designs includ-
[126] ing a three-page foldout, in one panel of which Schmied portrayed himself

in Arabian attire. With regard to the pages, approximately one in
seven, where major decorations appear, the book rivals Le cantique des
cantiques in richness, but in general it is less lavishly adorned than the
[127] Histoire de la princesse Boudour. The vignette of the page shown depicts
a garden against a turquoise sky, rendered by Dunand with all the precision
and sparkle of the original.

Confusion has arisen from the fact that Schmied published another
edition of the Histoire charmante de l'adolescente Sucre d'Amour in
1927.[128] Extending this time to 170 copies, it has 13 plates and several
[129] hundred smaller illustrations and decorations. Its most salient plate is
the frontispiece, a representation of Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid in an
Art Deco frame. Dominating the smaller illustrations are hundreds of
vignettes, one at the bottom of each page. These are small engravings,
[130] oddly reminiscent of Bewick in placement and conception. In the opening
shown the verso depicts a moonlit garden, the recto a lotus flower.
In general, this edition of the Histoire charmante de l'adolescente Sucre
d'Amour, with its darker coloring and more sober effects, hardly rises to
the level of its counterpart. One wonders if Schmied did not devise it to
placate those clients to whom he could not offer copies of his grander
book.

La création of 1928 is one of Schmied's most imposing volumes, a
folio with 41 engravings printed in color, including 12 large plates. In
addition to the first three books of Genesis, as literally translated by Dr.
Mardrus, and a genealogical tree of Adam's descendants, it includes a
learned introduction explaining the conflicting accounts of creation
which the work puts forward. Even Schmied addressed himself to no
more demanding subject, and some gorgeous compositions resulted.
[131] When compared with a grandiose conception like "Let there be light!"
(opposite p. 6) or the making of the sun and the moon (opposite p. 18),
however, it must be admitted that the artist's human figures seem relatively
commonplace.

Dr. Mardrus thought that Schmied's most "revealing" work as an
illustrator was his own Livre de la vérité de parole of 1929 which he described
as "a rendering in French of Egyptian hieroglyphics concerning
life after death, texts which are the foundations of all civilizations" (p.
261). Eschewing any sort of historical reconstruction, Schmied chose instead
to interpret the text as he had Vigny's Daphné, through largely
abstract designs. For each of the book's 12 "portals," as Mardrus calls
[132] them, he provided a plate. That shown is for the seventh of these section
openings, the voice of truth speaking as a lotus. Since Schmied omitted
his usual printed backgrounds of gold, platinum, or silver, the book is

relatively somber. Dark browns predominate at the beginning, shading
to lighter tones as the reader progresses. For Schmied it is an unusually
austere work, but a harmonious one.

Schmied's last three books with texts translated by Dr. Mardrus were
all published in 1930: Ruth et Booz, Le livre des rois, and Le paradis
musulman. In his introduction to Ruth et Booz Théo Schmied claimed
that the book embodies a "modern conception of beauty" in that detail
is sacrificed to the ensemble, returning to the purity of Italian primitive
design. It is certainly true at least that the unit is the opening rather than
the page, the illustrations being large rectangles in which the tale of
Ruth and Boaz is depicted step by step, extending across verso and recto,
and that for Schmied decoration is held to a minimum. The engaging
[133] qualities of the book may be seen in the wedding of Ruth and Boaz, in
which a predominantly sad story ends in happiness. In Le paradis musulman
Schmied returned to the style of his pair of stories from The Arabian
Nights, this time in an edition of 197 copies. It is a sumptuous book, the
greater availability of which allows the amateur to gain some conception
at first hand of the artist's achievements in his unfindable earlier volumes.

As the year 1930 began Schmied had good reason to be confident
about the future. In a survey for Byblis of the fine books of the previous
12 months, Pierre Guerquin offered this summary of his accomplishment:

The reception of the six books which Schmied completed during the year
seemed to confirm Guerquin's tribute. All have already been mentioned
except Kipling's Kim, which was published by the firm of Gonin in
Lausanne, and Chateaubriand's Les aventures du dernier Abencérage,
issued for the Bibliophiles de l'Amérique Latine. Yet the financial crisis
of the following winter, which tested everyone connected with the livre
d'art, showed Schmied to be particularly vulnerable. Even at the height
of his prosperity in 1928 Roland-Marcel had written of "the controversies,
the jealousies, the speculative fevers" that surrounded him and
the envy and malice which pursued him (pp. 151, 154). This reservoir
of ill will now found open expression. In defending Le paradis musul-

man in February of 1931 his supporter Pierre Mornand conceded that
"like all those who dare, who seek new patterns beyond the beaten path,
[Schmied and Dr. Mardrus] are violently attacked."[135] And when his
enemy Jean Bruller essayed a comprehensive survey of the French livre
d'art for Arts et métiers graphiques in November, he felt able to dismiss
Schmied in a concluding aside: "Undeniably he is an excellent engraver.
But as a creator and a publisher, I believe that his only talent has been
to know how to get his carefully cultivated clientele to accept his motifs
de catalogue as real art."[136]

These doubts concerning Schmied's artistic standing came to a head
at a time when his financial position was drastically overextended. He had
a number of books under way at his atelier and elsewhere, books for which
the demand had become uncertain at best. Moreover, he felt it his duty to
protect the market for his earlier works after the crash, so Ward Ritchie
relates, "buying bravely to keep up their value, but he could not keep on
forever and finally had to give up. He lost almost everything he had"
(p. 24). His yacht, the Peau-Brune, was sold. The atelier in the rue Halle
was closed. And in 1935 his library, including his precious personal copies
of his own books, was dispersed at auction at the Hôtel Drouot.

While these sad events were occurring, the books begun by Schmied
during his time of prosperity continued to appear. Indeed, eight further
titles were added to his bibliography before he died. Beset with material
worries, he was in no position to exercise the strict control over the production
of his works which had hitherto assured their excellence. Hence
these final volumes vary widely in merit. The most attractive by all odds
is Peau-Brune de Saint-Nazaire à la Ciotat of 1931, his journal of a
Mediterranean voyage aboard his yacht, illustrated with more than 100
engravings printed in color after his drawings. The most disappointing,
given the labor and resources which went into it, is a four volume edition
of the Odyssey, published between 1930 and 1934, all of the 140 sets of
which were printed on vellum. This could have been a rewarding experiment,
since Schmied's 100 drawings were engraved in black at the rue
Halle and sent to Saudé for pochoir coloring, but Schmied was so dissatisfied
with the typography and printing of Maurice Darantière that he
wrote an article for L'Illustration of Christmas 1932 explaining how the
work should have been designed.[137]

Given this accumulation of setbacks, Schmied's occupation appeared

to be gone, but at last friends procured an appointment for him at a
desert outpost beyond Marrakech in Morocco. "Here he created a miniature
palace for himself from a deserted fort," Ward Ritchie relates,
"painting its walls with colorful murals, planting the desert and bringing
order and beauty to the place" (p. 25). He alleviated his lonely life
by continuing to draw, providing the illustrations, indeed, for two books
engraved and printed by Théo Schmied. After his death of the plague
during January of 1941, he was buried there in a tomb of his own design.

Schmied's death in "a petty fortress," far from the scenes of his earlier
triumphs, might stand merely as one more example of "the vanity of
human wishes," were it not for the saving reflection that he left behind
him one of the most brilliant bodies of work ever encompassed by a bookartist.
This achievement has been obscured by the fact that he created so
many books, 36 by Léopold Carteret's count (3: 193-196), published in
such small editions. Few collectors and students have had the opportunity
to study and compare his productions in a consecutive way, and consequently
the filtering process of time, which usually operates automatically,
has not proceeded very far in his case. Once attention is fixed on
such books as Les climats, Daphné, Le cantique des cantiques, Deux
contes, his two Arabian tales colored by Dunand, and La création among
the books for which he himself made the designs, and Le livre de la
jungle, Personnages de comédie, Salonique, and Les vies imaginaires
among the books in which he engraved the designs of others, the magnitude
of his accomplishment will become clear. That he represents the
Art Deco book at its best, as well as its most typical, is self-evident. He
was also the supreme "architect of the book" of the 1920s, surpassing
rivals like Louis Jou and Jean-Gabriel Daragnès as far in the complexity
of his aims as in the mastery of his execution. But even these qualifications
pale beside his command of wood engravings printed in color,
which he employed as freely and easily as other master craftsmen who
worked in black and white. As Carteret told him, he was "the magician
of color" (3: 192).

4. Jean-Émile Laboureur

Jean-Émile Laboureur's achievement as a print-maker, and over the
past few years the attention devoted to his place in the early development
of cubism, have given him a standing in the larger world of art not
matched by either Barbier or Schmied. We are concerned with him as a
book artist, however, and here it is enough to assert that by common consent,
he, Barbier, and Schmied continue to be regarded as the leading

Art Deco illustrators. At the same time his work differs so greatly from
theirs that he has rarely been seen as their rival. He dealt almost entirely
in black and white rather than in color. He relied far more on vignettes
than on plates. And his cool, austere designs stand in marked contrast to
their warm, ornate creations. Rather than seeking to "load every rift with
ore," he was frugal with his illustrations, realizing each with a disciplined
selection of lines and dotting every series with a sparing hand
throughout the text which it was to decorate. To many books, indeed, he
contributed nothing but frontispieces, and only occasionally did his
illustrations, despite their small size, exceed 20 in number.

Moreover, far from aspiring to be an architecte du livre, a master of
all the arts of the book, Laboureur was not even a bibliophile. "In an
illustrated book," he told Marcel Valotaire, "only the designs interest
me."[138] Not for him were the infinite pains taken by Barbier and Schmied
to ensure that all aspects of their books would fully realize their intentions.
For Laboureur that was the business of the publisher. Hence Jean
Prinet, in the standard inventory of books illustrated by Laboureur,[139]
was able to describe 132 titles, a much larger number than the production
of Barbier and Schmied combined. In the survey of his career which
follows it will be necessary to limit consideration to certain salient yet
representative books from this long list.

Laboureur was deservedly fortunate in his publishers, who admired
him, allowed him to select texts which interested him for illustration,
and did their best to ensure that the mise en page, typography, and paper
of the resulting volumes would be worthy of his designs. From Camille
Bloch and the Nouvelle Revue Française, who were his early patrons, to
Au Sans Pareil and the bibliophile societies, who later performed a
similar service, his publishers saw to it that most of the volumes to which
he contributed were sufficiently attractive. The effect they sought was
one of understated elegance: open, airy pages to which an engraving or
an etching, usually in the form of a headpiece or a tailpiece, would add
the finishing touch. Such a setting harmonized with the works chosen,
which were invariably idiosyncratic, usually laconic, and often ironic.

Despite these pains, since Laboureur usually limited himself to black
and white, since his books were sparsely illustrated, since he favored
short texts which could be printed in small formats, even his major works
typically received only demi-luxe treatment by their publishers. The
outstanding exceptions to this rule were two books issued by societies of
bibliophiles—Jean Giraudoux's Suzanne et le Pacifique of 1927 for Les

Cent Une in an edition of 125 copies, and Aristophanes' La paix of 1930
for Les Bibliophiles du Palais in an edition of 200 copies—and Oscar
Wilde's Le portrait de Dorian Gray of 1928 published by Le Livre in an
edition of 280 copies. In consequence his work became much better
known at first hand among collectors in general than that of either Barbier
or Schmied. This circumstance has protected Laboureur from the
extremes of acceptance and rejection which the works especially of
Schmied have experienced.

Nowhere has this been more true, it may be noted, than in England
and America, where from the 1920s on he has had many admirers. Laboureur
was an Anglophile, who knew England and the English well,
and a number of his illustrations appeared in books published in England
or in books with English settings. In the former category his volumes
for the Golden Cockerel Press should be particularly mentioned, together
with his work for W. Heinemann, which was usually in the form
of frontispieces to Marcel Boulestin's culinary volumes. In the latter
were such titles as André Maurois' Les silences du Colonel Bramble of
1926 and Les discours du docteur O'Grady of 1929, both among his best
books.

As a preface to an account of Laboureur's career as a book artist, some
remarks about the formation of his distinctive style will be useful. The
most influential writers on the livre d'art in the 1920s, Clément-Janin,
Raymond Hesse, and the author of the volume on the book in the Rapport
général for the Art Deco exhibition of 1925, all emphasized the way
in which the decorative spirit of the time led book artists towards déformation
or distortion.[140]
Since literal realism no longer served their
purpose, they felt at liberty to discard it. Laboureur was the prime example
of this development, regarded as a leader by other illustrators. He
thought that the exact depiction of nature no longer had any interest for
the artist. Valotaire records his comments on the absurdity of reproductive
engraving in an age which had mastered photomechanical process,
and imagines him going on to remark about his original work: "This is
how it pleases me to represent the world in which I live and the people
who move restlessly around me. I wish to see them like that; I see them
like that because it amuses me" (p. 43).

Of crucial importance in the evolution of Laboureur's style was his
brief adherence to cubism, which began in 1913. Though his prints of
this period rank with those of La Fresnaye, Marcoussis, Picasso, and Villon,
the masters with whom he exhibited, his interest in cubism was
"decorative rather than analytical," and he used the new style from the

first for subjects of an anecdotal nature.[141] This personal emphasis became
more pronounced in the burins of his album, Petites images de la guerre
sur le front britannique of 1916, which Raoul Dufy thought superior to
his earlier etchings.[142] And when he turned to book illustration after the
War, he in effect left cubism behind him. Burr Wallen, the scholar who
has studied his cubist prints most closely, is able to claim for Laboureur's
books after 1920 only that "his elegant plates . . . carry the stylishness of
the Art Deco years to unrivalled heights of graphic refinement."[143]

Moreover, despite the geometric simplification of the images of Laboureur's
cubist phase—the elongation of his figures, their ovoid heads,
the reductions of his settings to their linear essentials—his work from the
beginning had a classic cast based on his grasp of what the early masters
of European engraving had to teach. "Whatever their anatomical distortion
by the artist," Valotaire observes, "however schematic their presentation,
[his people] still have a real existence; silhouette, attitude,
gestures are always translated, transposed, in exact keeping" (p. 43). And
as the years passed, the element of distortion in Laboureur's work progressively
diminished, in the process enhancing his range and subtlety as
an illustrator without impairing the distinctiveness of his style.

Born to a solid middle-class family in Nantes during 1877, Laboureur
received a humanistic education in that city before he enrolled at the age
of 18 at the Sorbonne.[144] His studies in Paris were widely dispersed, including
law as well as literature, and he was also much interested in the
visual arts. Cézanne was the master whom he most revered, but his
closest acquaintance was with Toulouse-Lautrec. Louis Godefroy relates
that, after Laboureur met the painter in 1895, "he often saw him at work
in the lithographic printing house which sometimes served as his studio,"
and that in time this association led him to take up painting himself, acquiring
in the process something of his mentor's "subtle penetration
into the comic aspect of men and things" (p. 20). Laboureur told Valotaire,
indeed, that Lautrec's conversation "opened my eyes on many
things; . . . he had the quickest of minds, spontaneous, altogether instinctive;
his words had a turn, a sense as sharp as his design" (p. 13). Meanwhile,
Laboureur was learning the technique of wood engraving from
Auguste Lepère, to whom he had been introduced by Lotz-Brissonneau,

the patron of the arts in Nantes who had also befriended Barbier. Though
his first wood engraving and his first etching both date from 1896, it was
not until after the War that his designs on metal began to outnumber his
designs on wood.

After performing his obligatory military service in 1898, Laboureur
began his long years of travel. A student devoured by insatiable curiosity,
he moved from country to country, at the same time applying himself
in a desultory way to his craft as an etcher and an engraver. In 1898
and 1899 he was in Dresden, where he worked in the Cabinet des Estampes,
pondering the prints of the early Italian, German, and French
masters of engraving. From them, Godefroy holds, Laboureur took "the
slightly unbending boldness of his precise figures, [his] often-used perspective
of the stained glass window, and [his] anecdotal relish," without
lapsing into false naïvete or anachronism (p. 21). Between 1903 and 1908
he passed much of his time in the United States and Canada, instead, as
he put it, of "vegetating in Nantes or Paris."[145] There he was particularly
drawn to Pittsburgh whose scenes of vast industrial activity he recorded
in his etchings. During these years he toured the continent as a lecturer
for the Alliance Française on subjects which touched both art and literature.
After a protracted sojourn in London, where he developed a passion
for Rowlandson, a trip to Greece in 1909 made him acquainted with
the decorative art of ancient vases and frescoes, and his immersion in the
Florentine world during the following spring led him to transfer the
vision they offered, so Godefroy maintains, to the world around him.
"The spectacle of modern life would henceforth suffice for Laboureur"
(p. 25). He returned to Paris in 1910, where he settled down at last to a
career as an artist.

With the outbreak of the War, he was soon in uniform. Speaking
fluent English, though with an American accent, he was attached as an
interpreter, first to the Twelfth Division of the British Army for more
than two years and then to the American Naval Base at Saint Nazaire. No
doubt active participation in organized communal life was a revelation
to Laboureur, but it should also be noted that his was a special sort of
military experience. "Here we hardly speak of the War," he wrote, "—but
of literature, cooking, travel, the arts . . . and we pay no attention to
cannons or airplanes, at any rate unless they are very near at hand."[146]
Falling in with Marcel Boulestin, a fellow army interpreter, he prepared
with him in 1915 a plaquette called Dans les flandres britanniques, which
contained, in Boulestin's words, "no concessions to public sentimentality,
no horrors, no patriotism—just picturesque little scenes of life in British

Flanders."[147] Stimulated by the success of these illustrations, Laboureur
devoted some of his abundant leisure the following year to the nine designs
of Petites images de la guerre sur le front britannique. For all its
slightness this album was of special significance in Laboureur's career as
a book-artist, displaying, as it did, what his friend Max Jacob had recognized
as his particular sort of cubism, tempered by a distinctive humor
and a full appreciation of Cézanne's contributions. It also saw the first
employment of what became his characteristic technique on metal. Unable
to carry about with him the equipment required for etching, he had
recourse to the burin, using his graver to work directly on copper plates
which he obtained from army stock. (The resulting prints are unlike
the typical dry point, and I shall refer to them simply as burins.) Several
plaquettes of wood engravings in a similar style ensued, among them
Types de l'armée américaine en France of 1918, recording his impressions
of the American Expeditionary Force.

Laboureur's last months in uniform were spent installing the collections
of the Musée de la Guerre. Once again a civilian, he had to consider
what the future held for him. Though he was well known as an
etcher and engraver, he discovered that a new career was opening out
before him. The combination of artistic talent and broad literary culture
which he had to offer was eminently marketable in the publishing world
of the 1920s. For several years, nonetheless, he remained primarily a
printmaker, the various books which he adorned being of relatively
minor importance. In 1923 he founded Les Peintres-Graveurs Indépendantes
and served as its first president. His profound mastery of both
the history and technique of engraving ensured that he would be in demand
as a lecturer and as a writer, and a forceful personality combined
with his many accomplishments to make him a person of consequence in
the Parisian art world.

Moreover, the erstwhile wanderer had settled down to a comfortable
domestic existence. After his marriage in 1919, he and his wife lived
chiefly on the Breton coast near Nantes, latterly in a house which they
built at Kerfahler in the Morbihan. Two sons were born to them. His
[148] appearance during this time of great prosperity is suggested by an affectionate
if teasing word-portrait which his friend Roger Allard drew
of him in 1925:

We may turn now to Laboureur's career as a book artist. His various
war-time albums have been mentioned. His first true book illustrated
with original graphics was L'Appartement des jeunes filles by Roger
Allard, who had written a letter-preface for Petites images de la guerre
sur le front britannique.[150] Projected before the War, it finally appeared
in 1919. To adorn his friend's poems about young women at play, enjoying
tennis, swimming, and less innocent diversions, Laboureur pro-
[151] vided six burins, still very much in the style of Petites images de la guerre.
Even so, they were not always received as cubist inventions, some critics
being reminded instead of the elongated bodies and small heads in Louis
Binet's illustrations for the novels of Restif de la Bretonne. Though
hardly more than a plaquette, the volume was well presented by its publisher,
Camille Bloch, and bibliophiles found it attractive.

Through his connection with the Nouvelle Revue Française, Allard
persuaded Gaston Gallimard in 1920 to commission designs from Laboureur
for Valery Larbaud's Beauté, mon beau souci, the story of a
romance between a young Frenchman and a London typist. This was a
much more substantial undertaking than L'Appartement des jeunes
filles. Allard knew now to ensure that, despite its being only a demi-luxe
edition of 412 copies, typography, layout, and paper were more than acceptable.
Instead of the six isolated plates of L'Appartement des jeunes
filles, drawn without regard for their placement in the text, Laboureur
designed a frontispiece and 38 vignettes. His evocation of London was
essentially what could be seen by a visitor quite outside the city's intimate
life. The flavor of English existence is conveyed chiefly through street
scenes—the top of an omnibus (p. 43), for example, or the Marble Arch
(p. 69). Only occasionally is the focus narrowed even to such a subject as
[152] the couple at tea in the Edgware Road (p. 72). It will be noted that the
distortion of Laboureur's figures has become less extreme than in L'Appartement
des jeunes filles. The many miniature illustrations dropped
in the text—a bouquet of flowers (p. 36), a pair of letters (p. 66), or a
[153] crocodile-skin valise (p. 139)—were already a trademark with the artist.

Beauté, mon beau souci was a key book for Laboureur in that it
established the pattern which he typically followed during his 20 years

as a book artist. His aim was to establish an ambiance for his text through
decorative compositions, not to detail once again in pictures what had
already been written in words. So the effect of his designs comes more
from their impact as a series than from the specific contribution of each
individual illustration. In a phrase once used by The New Yorker, what
counts is "all of the whole of the tout ensemble." When compared with
the blaze of color that one finds in Barbier and Schmied, Laboureur's
minimal blacks and grays may at first seem meager and drab. Yet the
strategy works, for the reader has been brought to a properly receptive
frame of mind by the decorative vision which Laboureur's spare and
elegant line imposes.

Despite its excellence, the small edition of Beauté, mon beau souci
was not exhausted for two years, a circumstance which Allard invidiously
ascribed to the vogue of "horrible coloriages printed in the style of
luxurious catalogues" (p. 73). Meanwhile, Laboureur was demonstrating
his mastery as a book-artist of other graphic techniques: of wood
[154] engravings printed in color in Évariste Parny's Chansons madécasses
[155] of 1920, of aquatint in Diderot's Supplément au voyage de Bougainville
of 1921, and of lithographs in Jean Giraudoux's Promenade avec Gabrielle,
which was finished in 1921 though it was not published until 1924.
Even if in the future he often resorted to wood engraving, and occasionally
to lithography, for his illustrations, he was henceforth regarded
primarily as an engraver and an etcher.

Passing by a variety of minor, though interesting, publications, we
may take up the tale again in 1925. Laboureur's position as an illustrator
was now established. His collaboration in a livre d'art guaranteed its acceptance
by bibliophiles. He could pick and choose among commissions,
sometimes taking the initiative himself with publishers, in fixing on
texts which appealed to his sophisticated personal taste. For a time the
major books to which he applied himself were off-beat stories of 20th
century French life, each revived for publication with his designs after it
had achieved a following among a discriminating public. These included
Jacques de Lacretelle's Silbermann of 1925, Remy de Gourmont's Le
songe d'une femme of the same year, and Colette's L'Envers du musichall
of 1926.

It is easy to see why Silbermann, originally published in 1922, recommended
itself to Laboureur. This short novel, which turns on the hostility
and persecution encountered by a sensitive Jewish schoolboy at his
Parisian Lycée, had a special significance in the perfervid atmosphere of
the 1920s. In his 16 burins, eight plates and eight headpieces, the artist
as usual devoted much of his attention to the ambiance of the tale.
Scenes at the Lycée, in and out of class, in the comfortable family apartments

of Silbermann and of his comrade who tells the story, and in the
country where the boys take their vacation bring an easy and cultivated
way of life before the reader. But Laboureur also shows an unaccustomed
interest in the characters and their crucial confrontations. Mme. Silbermann
is the subject of a full-scale portrait (p. 42). There is a stirring
[156] tableau of Silbermann pulling himself together after a fight at school
(opposite p. 68), and Laboureur does not neglect the moment of truth in
[157] which the narrator overhears his parents talking about his friend (opposite
p. 136). The result is one of Laboureur's more forceful series of
designs. Without subordinating his decorative scheme, he has become as
well an illustrator of psychological penetration. Published by the Nouvelle
Revue Française, and evidently patterned on Beauté, mon beau
souci, which that firm had issued in 1920, this demi-luxe book (442 copies)
is equally attractive in its presentation, and Laboureur's response to its
theme gives his illustrations a weight and meaning which do not detract
in the least from their grace and elegance.

Among the books illustrated by Laboureur of which Camille Bloch
was the publisher, Le songe d'une femme is the most successful. Paul
Escoube described Remy de Gourmont's novel in letters as "a kind of album
of attitudes towards love, from the most modest and chaste to the
most daring,"[158] and these attitudes are comprehensively suggested in the
[159] artist's 27 burins. Indeed, the frontispiece is dominated by a woman's
head in outline, beyond which are glimpsed her diverse imaginings. But
one may surmise that Laboureur found an even stronger reason for reviving
this book after 20 years in the opportunity it gave him to depict
the French countryside, thus embarking on what for him was a largely
unexplored range of subjects. Distinctive as his female figures are, it is
[160] the scenes of forest (p. 65), country house, and seashore (p. 109) which
most engage the reader's attention. Once more the miniature designs,
[161] country still-lifes such as just-prepared pots of jam (p. 31), have their
special charm. Bloch's realization of this small quarto, published in an
edition of 455 copies, has its ingenious touches, from the facsimiles of the
correspondents' signatures to the choice of an Italic type newly designed
by Bernard Naudin as "suitable to the epistolary form of the work."[162]
It may be mentioned that Bloch's final book illustrated by Laboureur,
Remy de Gourmont's Couleurs of 1928, though more elaborate is less
successful. The colors added to its 36 etchings seem superfluous in the
work of this master of black and white.

If we pass by the Tableau des grands magasins for the moment,
Laboureur's next work of importance was his friend Colette's L'Envers

du music-hall. Once again he had chosen a novel subject for his graver.
In this account of music-hall existence before the War, first published in
1913, Colette drew upon reminiscences of a difficult period in her life.
For its 440 copies Laboureur composed 32 burins, vignettes except for
five plates, which convey the harshness of second-rate performers' lives
[163] as seen from "the wrong side." The frontispiece, showing the troupe in
the rain as it sets out on its travels, sets the tone for all the designs which
follow. In consonance with Colette's vision there is glamor neither in the
vignettes, which depict the habitual round of the players and theri ani-
[164] mals—on stage (p. 9), at the side-scenes, or in the dressing-rooms—nor in
the plates, which present the chief figures of the anecdotes that she relates.
The artist has made his illustrations as bleak as his author's text.

After 1925 Laboureur's work as a book artist became so diverse and
abundant that it would be tedious and confusing to review it in strictly
chronological order. I shall comment instead on some of the principal
groups into which his books fall: (1) those with English subjects, including
those with English texts published in England; (2) those concerned
primarily with the material background of the life of worldly leisure;
(3) a representative selection from his less substantial works; and (4) the
two culminating books of the period, Suzanne et le Pacifique and Les
contrerimes. An examination of these volumes will make it clear why
Raymond Hesse could write by 1928: "Laboureur occupies a place entirely
apart in illustration and . . . presents a personality of the first significance"
(p. 54).

Such an examination will also reveal decisive changes both in his
approach to illustration and in his technique. Without ceasing to be primarily
a decorative artist, imposing his vision through the uniform style
of his many small designs, he made increasing concessions to illustration
as traditionally conceived. He no longer confined himself, as of set purpose,
to the marginal aspects of his texts. On occasion he allowed himself
to be direct rather than oblique, portraying leading characters and
depicting dramatic encounters. Moreover the calculated distortions and
rigidities of his style became less pronounced; indeed, the figures in his
designs assume almost normal proportions, and the settings in which
they appear are drawn with increasing freedom.

With regard to technique, Valotaire discerned a "second manner" in
Laboureur's development as a book artist beginning with Les silences du
Colonel Bramble. Supporting his argument from Laboureur's essays on
the art and history of engraving, the critic shows how he came to employ
a variety of tools, such as the etcher's needle and the roulette, to enrich
and make flexible his basic work with the graver. Laboureur achieved
thereby a fuller, subtler technique, better adapted to realizing the more

complex values which he wished to impart to his illustrations (pp. 39-40).
An example of Laboureur's "second manner" is offered by his contribution
to one of the most delightful of Art Deco books, the tricentenary
edition of Perrault's Contes published in 1928. Each of 33 graphic artists
contributed a plate, but it was left to Laboureur to provide the striking
[165] medley from Perrault's tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and
the rest) which opens this édition dite des "33 graveurs."

It will be remembered that Beauté, mon beau souci of 1920 had
London as its setting. Laboureur returned to an English subject in two
of his most engaging series of illustrations, those for André Maurois' Les
silences du Colonel Bramble and its sequel Les discours du docteur
O'Grady, in 1926 and 1929 respectively. The former, according to Valotaire,
was regarded as "the book which without any doubt has been the
artist's greatest triumph" (p. 33). A perfect match between author and
artist ensured that Laboureur would eventually illustrate these volumes,
which were originally published in 1918 and 1922. Maurois had served
as a liaison officer with the British Army during the War, and he based
his narratives on his memories of these years. Laboureur had gone
through very similar experiences; indeed, he might have been the interpreter
Aurelle who figures in Maurois' books.

Moreover, Maurois and Laboureur saw the world from a like perspective.
Both would have endorsed W. E. H. Lecky's affirmation, which
stands as the epigraph to Les silences du Colonel Bramble, that there are
few better models in life than the English gentleman. The humor and
charm of Maurois' ensuing text derives in large part from the imperturbble
acceptance by his little group of British officers of whatever may
befall them. Since they are serving behind the lines in Flanders during
the later years of a war of attrition, the trials that come their way are
relatively minor. Maurois' subject for the most part is not combat but
that equivalent of peace-time domestic life which men fashion for themselves
under such conditions and above all the conversations on all subjects
under the sun which are thereby encouraged.

Laboureur found much to appeal to his whimsical turn of mind in
such a subject: for example, the gramophone in the officer's mess which
becomes the Colonel's pride and joy (p. 13), or his being called upon to
[166] reassure a maiden lady who has complained of the "shocking spectacle"
presented by his soldiers at their morning ablutions (p. 167). Yet the
dreariness of such a war is not suppressed in Laboureur's graphic commentary,
as his frontispiece bears witness; nor are its dangers, as in his
rendering of Maurois' almost mathematical demonstration that a shell
[167] had to destroy Private Scott because no man escapes his destiny (p. 75). It
is significant, as well, that in Les discours du docteur O'Grady Laboureur

selects for illustration an anecdote related by Bramble which suggests the
ruthlessness which lay beneath his amiable manner. Private Biggs, a small
cockney, has complained that he runs so slowly that he will never get a
chance to kill. In the next attack his gigantic mates corner two Germans
[168] in their trench until Biggs can finish them off (p. 112). Throughout the
two volumes Laboureur characterizes his principal personages exclusively
through their bodily confirmation and posture. Their faces count
for nothing, yet their silhouettes identify them unmistakably, as in this
[169] rendering of the Colonel and Aurelle setting out for Ypres (Bramble,
p. 135).

Both Les silences du Colonel Bramble and Les discours du docteur
O'Grady have a frontispiece and 14 vignettes, burins in the first and
burins completed by etching in the second. They were printed in editions
of 440 and 430 copies respectively, but it must be admitted that,
except for Laboureur's engravings, they would hardly qualify as livres
d'art.

Laboureur's designs for Oscar Wilde's Le portrait de Dorian Gray
are among his best work, and once again they show him departing widely
from his usual strategy for presenting a text. The sober elegance of the
large headpieces executed by burin and roulette which introduce each
of the 20 chapters of this ambitious livre d'art, published in 1928 in an
edition of 280 copies, makes them highly decorative, but in their indirect
and understated way they are also true illustrations. Until his final design
Laboureur is content to play down the sensational elements of Wilde's
novel. For example, the reader never sees the portrait which must bear
the cumulative effect of Dorian Gray's misdeeds. In the headpiece to
[170] the first chapter, while Lord Henry Wotton speaks to Basil Hallward as
the painter adds his finishing touches (p. 1), the canvas is shown from
behind. Later it is wrapped for removal to storage (p. 183), and still later
our angle of vision is limited to Basil Hallward's reaction when Dorian
draws back the curtain which conceals it (p. 239). Again, when the young
actress Sybil Vane kills herself after her brutal rejection by Dorian, we
are shown her corpse (p. 143), but the true horror of the episode has
already been brought home by Laboureur's depiction of Dorian's sinister
[171] figure as he returns home at dawn through Covent Garden Market after
their confrontation (p. 125). Indeed, the stages of Dorian's degradation
are rarely presented in a broad or obvious way. The experiments in behavior
into which he is led by his absorption in Huysmans' À rebours are
suggested merely by a glimpse of him reading in his study. Yet in the
latter half of the book the mood of the artist's designs does become increasingly
threatening: blacks and dark grays predominate in his engravings

of London's gloomiest aspects. Then comes Wilde's melodramatic
climax, which even Laboureur could not resist. We see at last what the
portrait would have revealed, when Dorian, seeking to destroy the can-
[172] vas with the knife which he used to kill Basil Hallward, thereby kills
himself (p. 341).

Laboureur's extensive English connections led to his providing designs
for some 18 books with texts in English, nearly all of them printed
in England. The most considerable of these were Jacques Cazotte's The
Devil in Love of 1925, Thomas Carew's A Rapture of 1927, Sterne's A
Sentimental Journey and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy of
1928 and 1929-30 respectively (the last three for the Golden Cockerel
Press), and George Farquhar's The Beaux' Strategem also of 1928. Of
The Devil in Love 395 copies were printed for England and 365 for the
United States. The latter issue has six etchings. In dealing with this short
picaresque tale, first published as Le diable amoureux in 1772, Laboureur
paid more attention than usual to period decor and costume,
and though his plates are highly decorative, they are also tied to specific
episodes in the text with the relevant passages printed below the images.
Moreover, the moments Laboureur chose are crucial to the progress of
the story, as in this Venetian tableau of the seeming assassination of
[173] Biondetta, with whom the narrator is in love (p. 48). The result is a commentary
on Cazotte's text as pertinent as it is lively. A Sentimental Journey
may stand as representative of the works of classic English literature
which Laboureur illustrated. As with his 15 plates for Tristram Shandy,
his six for this work combine engraving and etching. Hardly more than
sketches of passing moments in Sterne's chronicle, his designs leave unexploited
such familiar passages as that on "The Dead Ass" in which an
old traveller discourses mournfully on the loss of his patient companion.
But in style and manner they harmonize with Sterne's carefully informal
text, just as they suggest the book's 18th century background. An ex-
[174] ample is Sterne's purchase of gloves from a fair shopkeeper in Paris
(opposite p. 69). Also deserving of comment is William Cowper's The
Diverting History of John Gilpin, published by Ronald Davis of Paris
in 1931 in an edition of 57 copies. It is stated of the comic drawings of
this little book that "the lithographs have been drawn by Lucien Serre
et Cie." In the style of English caricatures of the later eighteenth century,
and thus after their fashion contemporary with Cowper's poem, they may
have been intended by Laboureur as a tribute to a long-time favorite,
Thomas Rowlandson. They are altogether unlike his work on metal,
though they have a certain kinship to the lithographs from his own hand
in Jean Giraudoux's Promenade avec Gabrielle of 1921. As will be seen

[175] from the opening shown, their animation, color, and abundance (one to
a page) make an appeal quite different from that of Laboureur's usual
designs.

Finally, Laboureur's friendship for Marcel Boulestin led him to design
frontispieces for a number of the latter's culinary and gastronomical
works. They also collaborated in two books, Petits et grands verres, of
which more presently, and The New Keepsake for the Year 1921. For the
latter Boulestin selected the texts and Laboureur the plates. Among the
artists he chose were Robert Bonfils, Galanis, Marcel Gromaire, Marie
Laurencin, and Dunoyer de Segonzac—the French contemporaries whose
work he found most congenial. His own contribution, characteristically,
[176] was the portrait of a barmaid (p. 35), which may serve to represent his
illustrations for Boulestin in general.

Laboureur's frontispieces to Boulestin's books provide a natural transition
to an idiosyncratic category among his books of the middle and
later 1920s, those in which he took as his subject the material setting for
the life of worldly leisure. Himself a bon vivant who delighted in food,
wine, and the spectacle of society, he here concerned himself not so much
with its people as with its background and accoutrements. In his hands
these things, usually left to the often gross and always suspect attentions
of advertisers, were imbued with a grace and elegance which make them
a delight to behold.

J. Valmy Baysse's Tableau des grands magasins of 1925 surveys the
great Parisian department stores through informal essays and sketches.
Published in the collection "Tableaux contemporains," which included
another notable volume in Tristan Bernard's Tableau de la boxe with
etchings by Dunoyer de Segonzac, it appeared in an edition of 315 copies
with 12 burins by Laboureur: six plates, which are among his most ambitious
illustrations, and six headpieces. As the author observes, the department
store claimed all retail commerce as its province, and to attract
the public to this novel initiative it drew upon the boldest experiments
of contemporary decorative art (p. 25). Thus Laboureur's plates in their
small way are as representative of the Art Deco style as was anything in
[177] the great exhibition of the same year. An example is a scene before an
elevator (opposite p. 55). Elsewhere he shows the store at its busiest and
most animated, during sales, for example, or just before Christmas (op-
[178] posite table of contents). "The hectic, charming, Parisian atmosphere"
(p. 126) of the establishment is omnipresent in his engravings.

Petits et grands verres: choix des meilleurs cocktails of 1927 was translated
from the English of Nina Toye and A. H. Adair by Laboureur himself
under the pseudonym of Ph. Le Huby. The unsigned preface, the
work of Marcel Boulestin in the English version of 1925, has touches

which can only have come from Laboureur. The resulting small quarto
is one of the artist's most delightful books. Only the 260 copies of the
limited edition included his 10 burins, plates which again exceed his
usual scale. The preface opens with a nostalgic survey of the Parisian bars
of the beginning of the century. Included are reminiscences of ToulouseLautrec,
for whom "all bars were good, but he had his preferences" (p. 2).
Lautrec was not above inventing cocktails, it is related, though he himself
preferred a bottle of Scotch and a siphon. A section on the history of
the cocktail follows, in which assurance is offered that they are now served
as frequently at home as in public. There is a concluding admonition to
the reader to try his own hand at devising recipes, thereby contributing
"to the progress of a young art, which is full of promise" (p. 6). Laboureur's
plates begin with bars at various social levels, including a design
set in the 1890s and inscribed "hommage to Toulouse-Lautrec,"
[179] which shows the painter's occasional subject, "Chocolat dancing in a bar."
He proceeds to groups of drinkers in other settings, beside a tennis court,
in a boudoir, at a picnic, and—as a tribute to creole cuisine—on a plantation.
That the book was a labor of love for Laboureur, in both its text
and its illustrations, is evident throughout.

How Laboureur could transform the backgrounds against which the
leisure class led its life was shown again in 1927 through the 10 burins
which illustrated Valery Larbaud's 200 chambres, 200 salles de bain, a
volume issued in 366 copies. The glimpses offered of the appearance and
routine of this luxurious Portuguese hotel, which was considered large at
[180] the time—its exterior, the arrival of guests, its garden, its dining room,
and so on—show it to be a palace of distinction and elegance. These designs
lead one to speculate on what Laboureur might have made of
Arnold Bennett's Imperial Palace of 1930.

Before paying tribute to Laboureur's outstanding books of the later
1920s, Suzanne et le Pacifique and Les contrerimes, I should mention
three other works of interest. Georges Camuset's Les sonnets du docteur,
the poems of a nineteenth century practitioner resuscitated by a Dijon
publisher in 1926, has four etchings by Laboureur. An hors d'oeuvre
among the artist's books, it is yet worth mentioning for two reasons. It
shows him working in the same field as did Daumier, one of the masters
to whom he was most devoted, in Némésis médicale, and it contains a
[181] plate which in its way foreshadows his own fate. This striking design
depicts Camuset's great-uncle Bernard, "still vigorous, but very old,"
succumbing to a stroke at table after consuming an excellent but too
copious dinner (p. 52). Gastronomic subjects were always attractive to
Laboureur, but it is curious that he should have chosen one with such
admonitory overtones.

Les caves du Vatican, a sortie or entertainment by André Gide, was
first published in 1914. For the reissue of 1929-30, printed in an edition
of 372 copies by the Nouvelle Revue Française, Laboureur provided a
frontispiece for each of the five spacious volumes, as well as a headpiece
for each chapter, for a total of 44 etchings. An unusual feature was the
printing in bister of the headpieces with added touches of bister in the
frontispieces. The publication presents both artist and author in a lighthearted
mood, rather as if Eric Gill had undertaken to illustrate Steven-
[182] son's New Arabian Nights. The frontispiece of the final volume shows
Lafcadio committing his famous acte gratuite, a perfectly motiveless
murder.

Laboureur's designs for the 1930 reissues of Maeterlinck's La vie des
abeilles, La vie des fourmis, and La vie des termites, first published in
the years 1901 and following, constituted something of a tour de force.
In the rich illustrations for an edition of La vie des abeilles which had
appeared in 1908, Carlos Schwabe did full justice to the country settings
of that book but ignored the insects which are its main concern. Not so
Laboureur, who had at his command the delicacy and precision to deal
expertly with these tiny creatures. Only a few of the 32 burins of these
volumes are plates, such as that showing a beekeeper and his hives which
[183] serves as the frontispiece to La vie des abeilles. The rest are vignettes,
appearing on the opening page of each section of the three volumes,
hardly larger than the insects they depict. Most successful, perhaps, are
the headpieces for La vie des termites, made oblong rather than square
[184] to accommodate these white ants in their habitat. Here is Laboureur's
sketch of the queen and her consort, about which Maeterlinck wrote:
"this queen presents the most monstrous hypertrophy that one finds in the
whole world of insects, and yet Nature is not miserly with monstrosities"
(p. 89). Apart from Laboureur's designs these three volumes, published
in editions of 750 copies each, make only modest claims for themselves.

We come now to Jean Giraudoux's Suzanne et le Pacifique. A reissue
of 1927, six years after its initial appearance, it was undertaken for the
bibliophile society, Les Cent Une. Since Laboureur's 33 burins, all vignettes
but unusually large, made it one of his two or three finest books,
it is unfortunate that the limitation of the edition to 125 copies has prevented
most amateurs from becoming acquainted with it at first hand.
Giraudoux's fantasy on the tropical island theme is related by an 18-yearold
girl. Living with her tutor near Toulouse, Suzanne learns that she
has won a trip around the world in a competition held by an Australian
newspaper. Laboureur's designs for the early chapters, which show her at
[185] home and aboard an ocean liner on her way to Sydney (as on p. 62),
establish the familiar world from which she is swept by a tempest. Then

comes the heart of the book, her experiences on the island where she
finds herself. For Giraudoux the interest of the situation lay in her responses,
at once naïve and sophisticated. Laboureur found his opportunities
in the hitherto unexplored scenes offered to him, vegetation, birds,
animals, all under a different sun. Suzanne is cordially received by the
[186] island's creatures (p. 101), for in its way it is a paradise. At one with
[187] nature, her adventure becomes an idyll (p. 180). Indeed, her rescue,
[188] when it occurs, is an anti-climax (p. 244). Godefroy has well observed
how marvellously Laboureur contrived to associate "his brilliant linear
art with Giraudoux's sparkling, mannered prose. These small prints,
ethereal, transparent, and satin-like with tropical light, have the shimmering
brightness of the text which they accompany" (p. 29). It is revealing
to compare Laboureur's burins with the copper engravings which
the always estimable Jean-Gabriel Daragnès made for his edition of Suzanne
et le Pacifique the following year. Though dealing with a tropical
paradise, a subject which would seem to call out for bright colors and a
wide canvas, Laboureur's delicate art prevails.

Even if judged by entirely conventional expectations concerning the
livre d'art, Paul-Jean Toulet's Les contrerimes of 1930 has few rivals
among Art Deco books. Issued in an edition of 301 copies, it is a large
quarto to which paper, typography, and mise en page have all made their
appropriate contributions. The artist's 62 vignettes, distributed evenly
through its 145 pages, make it his fullest effort of illustration. The distortion
that marked the figures of Beauté, mon beau souci a decade earlier
has virtually disappeared, yet the subtler aspects of Laboureur's style
continue to give his designs a unifying stamp. Indeed, they are as harmonious
as they are varied, never departing from their note of urbane
elegance.

Among Toulet's hundred-odd poems—polished, witty, and worldly—
Laboureur seized upon whatever points happened to catch his fancy.
Often a passing image or allusion provided the hint for a small decora-
[189] tion. When love is compared to smoke, for example, a small engraving
shows cigarettes, a holder, an ashtray, and a matchbox, all in the Art Deco
style (p. 87). At the other end of the scale, a reference to Arles or London,
to Djibouti or Saigon, calls forth a more substantial rendering.
These crisp and economical evocations are usually generalized, but sometimes
they reflect special conditions imposed by the text, as when Toulet
[190] describes an elephant on the streets of Paris (p. 33). Since love, always
profane, is a prominent theme, Laboureur depicts many pretty ladies.
[191] So a young girl awakens from a dream of lost virginity (p. 30), or an orgy
is glimpsed during a moment of lassitude (p. 61). In sum, the world of
Toulet's imagination is offered to the reader with consistent distinction,

the poet's command of intricate verse forms being matched by the artist's
mastery of his graver.

Laboureur's career as a book artist had reached its peak between 1926
and 1930, when each year saw the appearance of several significant
volumes with his designs. Yet the financial crisis of 1930—31 was not the
disaster for him that it was for Schmied. It is true, however, that thereafter,
apart from the drawings for two volumes of Maupassant's Oeuvres
complètes in 1934 and 1936, which were reproduced by mechanical process,
only a few major commissions came his way, and those for the most
part were for editions of 200 copies or fewer, directed at the minuscule
market of wealthy collectors whose devotion to livres d'art had survived
the crash. Indeed, the most appealing of these, Perrault's Peau d'âne of
1935 with 31 etchings, limited to 75 copies, was issued by the artist himself.
But Laboureur had another string to his bow. Once again he turned
to print-making as his principal occupation, and some of his most ambitious
works, including the 25 landscapes of the series devoted to a vast
swamp near the Loire called La Grande Brière, date from this period.

The serious illness which had overtaken Laboureur at the end of 1938
left him permanently paralyzed at Kerfahler after an attack during the
following Easter vacation. Though he could no longer draw, a letter of
15 December 1941 to his friend and patron Jacques André in Paris, which
is mounted in a copy of Le portrait de Dorian Gray owned by a New York
collector, bears witness that he remained mentally alert and still concerned
with the interests of a lifetime. Dictated to his wife, but bearing
his faltering signature, it acknowledges the receipt of 2500 francs for
"putting all the color desirable" in a set of his illustrations for Wilde's
novel and expresses his eagerness to visit Paris in order to see the bindings
which Paul Bonet had created for André's copies of books with his illustrations.
Whether he was allowed to leave the zone interdite of which
the War had made Kerfahler a part is uncertain. He died there in 1943.

Though Laboureur was a supreme Art Deco book artist, and each of
his principal books exemplifies the style in a striking way, I should emphasize
in my conclusion that he also became an outstanding illustrator
in the traditional sense. An intelligent man of wide sympathies, as much
at home in literature as in life, he was expert at mastering and interpreting
the texts which he himself chose. Despite the abundance of his production,
he succeeded in avoiding repetition and monotony. Since he
worked through selection rather than profusion, he never overwhelmed
the reader with his designs. Once his cubist phase was over, his style
acquired a suppleness which enabled him to achieve the varied effects
demanded by his ever changing subjects, without losing any of the distinctiveness
which marked it as his own. Moreover, his way of seeing the

world was witty in itself. The human comedy is always amusing as presented
through his eyes. Since he invariably employed original graphics
over which he had complete control, his resourcefulness enabled him to
present his personal vision with a precise elegance which made the smallness
of scale to which he worked a major asset. In sum, his notable
volumes, among them Beauté, mon beau souci, L'Envers du music-hall,
Les silences du Colonel Bramble, Suzanne et le Pacifique, Le portrait
de Dorian Gray, and Les contrerimes, are among the classics of the French
illustrated book.

5. Pierre Legrain and Art Deco Bookbinding

We come finally to the bindings of the 1920s, which have been far
more influential than illustrations in attracting admirers of Art Deco to
the books of the period. In Victor Arwas' recent survey, for example, they
are the subject of a major chapter, whereas illustrated books in themselves
receive only sporadic attention.[192] Moreover, the interest of collectors
of Art Deco bindings now extends beyond Legrain, Schmied, and
Rose Adler, beyond Cretté, Creuzevault, and Bonfils, beyond a dozen
other authentic workers in the style, to binders whose productions had
dropped out of sight for decades and perhaps will do so again. Indeed,
almost any elaborately decorated binding of the 1920s, no matter how
inferior its quality, seems today to find its purchaser, a situation that will
surely change as the original and accomplished work of the time becomes
more generally known.

It will be well to begin with a brief account of what Legrain and his
followers were to disavow. That the 25 years between the publication of
Marius Michel's L'Ornementation des reliures modernes in 1889 and the
outbreak of the War were a high point of French fine binding is now
generally conceded. The ranking masters were Henri Marius Michel,
Émile Mercier, and Charles Meunier, but there were a dozen other binders
like Canape, Carayon, Chambolle-Duru, Gruel, Kieffer, Maylander,
and Noulhac, whose work was regarded as almost equally acceptable.
The revolutionary principle announced in the preface to Marius Michel's
treatise, that one should "make the exterior decoration of a book
accord with the subject treated therein" (p. 2), was explored in all its
nuances with remarkable results. As Marius Michel himself pointed out,
this principle could be applied as appropriately to modest as to elaborate
bindings, but in the eyes of posterity, the idea of opulence came to be associated
as firmly with bindings as with all other aspects of Belle Epoque
production. There is the story, indeed, of the traditionalist, distressed by

the tendencies of the time, who remarked of a characteristic example:
"You call that a binding? It is the foyer of the Opéra!"

At any rate, when a reaction occurred after the War, it was in the
name of simpler, more restrained decoration, though still one appropriate
to the book being bound. What critics then found to deplore will
become evident if we glance at four examples of Belle Epoque binding
[193] at its most ambitious. Marius Michel's creation for Huysmans' À rebours
of 1903 illustrated by Lepère is a particularly successful specimen of
the floral ornament which he made synonymous with Art Nouveau
binding. Its suitability to the text is achieved by a subtle harmony of
color and design, not by anything assertively allusive. Far less restrained
were the so-called reliures parlantes of the period, decorated with pictures
in mosaic morocco of scenes from the text. Their sumptuousness
[194] is shown in Meunier's doublure for Octave Uzanne's Physiologies des
[195] quais de Paris of 1893. Even richer is the Arabian splendor of Maylander's
binding for Toussaint's Le jardin des caresses of 1914, illustrated
by Léon Carré. A double purpose is served by my final example.
[196] Another reliure parlante by Meunier, this time on Erastène Ramiro's
Faune parisienne of 1901, with illustrations by Louis Legrand, it makes
use of incised leather panels after Legrand's etchings. Though executed
in every respect as if it had been done at the time of the book's publication,
it is dated 1924—thus underlining the persistence of conservative
taste among post-War bibliophiles.

During the course of the 1920s the dominance among bibliophiles
of the binding tradition just described was called into question, shaken,
and finally overcome by the example of one man, Pierre Legrain. But
this was a gradual process, and the assertion in Pierre Legrain relieur, the
standard catalogue of his work, that between 1919 and 1929 he was the
"uncontested master" of the art of binding[197] is far from correct. The
story of his brief but spectacular career in bookbinding is more complex
as well as more interesting.

The son of a well-to-do industrialist, born 20 October 1889, Legrain
passed his early years in a Parisian suburb. By the age of 12 he had left
school to apply himself to the study of design, which he pursued with
increasing fervor. He was almost equally devoted to sports, notably tennis,
cycling, and pelota (jai alai). Excessive exertion during a cycling
tour brought on a nearly mortal attack, and he was henceforth afflicted
with a cardiac condition which made him incapable of sustained physical
effort. At the same period his father suffered drastic business reverses,

and the elder Legrain's death shortly thereafter left Legrain and his
mother without resources. Following a period of recuperation in the
Auvergne, he returned to Paris to earn their living by his designs.

Eventually his drawings brought him to the attention of the decorator
Paul Iribe, whose friend and assistant he became. Between 1908
and 1914 he was Iribe's unacknowledged collaborator in all sorts of decorative
work, sometimes originating designs, sometimes completing them
from Iribe's sketches. After the War began, he saw such noncombatant
duty as his physical condition permitted. He also married the young
mother of Jacques Anthoine, later himself a well-known binder under
the name Jacques Anthoine-Legrain, and she gave him a happy and comfortable
home.

This was Legrain's situation in 1916 when Jacques Doucet made him
a momentous proposal.[198] Adept at everything having to do with decoration,
he yet had little public reputation of his own. And at a time when
the War had suppressed both the materials and the market for the
decorative arts, he was hard put to find employment. Doucet was celebrated
as a fashion designer, a collector, and a patron of artists and writers.
Having sold his great 18th century collection in 1912, he was in the
process of forming another, a bibliothèque moderne, which would include
not only the books but also the working manuscripts and the proofs
of leading contemporary authors—a truly original conception anticipating
by decades the institutional collecting policies of our own time.
Through his commissions to artists and artisans he was also one of the
principal inspirers of the Art Deco style. If Legrain had talent in need
of employment, Doucet had a collection of books requiring to be bound,
and in his atelier were the materials for such bindings. Marie Darmoy,
Doucet's first librarian, imagines him addressing Legrain, "while the
battle of Verdun was raging," in these terms:

When Legrain protested that he had no competence as a binder, Doucet
replied: "You will draw the maquettes, and the binders who have worked
for me up till now will execute them." So Legrain was installed in

Doucet's dining room, comfortably warm even under wartime conditions,
at the then acceptable wage of 300 francs a month. Between 1917
[200] and 1919 he designed some 370 bindings which were executed principally
by René Kieffer, but also by Canape, Noulhac, and Germaine Schroeder.

Thus it happened that a great binder found his vocation and that the
first step was taken towards revolutionizing the style of modern French
binding. The books which resulted exist today, intact and fresh, at the
Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris. The originality of Legrain's
work is evident at a glance. In their restrained elegance they offer
a refreshing change from the still prevailing opulence of Belle Epoque
binding. Legrain touched on the rationale of these early bindings in an
interview of 1923. While explaining how the artist differs from the artisan,
he remarked that "one must know how to take advantage of large
surfaces, of elliptical hints which point to subtle thoughts, and which,
under very simple appearances, allow very delicate ideas to be surmised."
Above all one should not "over-embellish" but use the Jansenist cover
as a base, rejecting "traditional lace patterns, ancestral fleurons, complicated
mosaics, raised bands dividing the spine."[201]

Considered intrinsically rather than historically, however, Legrain's
earliest bindings can hardly be regarded as masterpieces. No doubt they
employ the best morocco. No doubt such frills as gilt edges are disdained.
No doubt their austere geometric patterns are harmonious and their
infinitely varied use of typographic characters from a book's title to
adorn its front cover is truly original. No doubt, as Jacques Chapon has
recently shown (pp. 257-258), the bindings designed for each of Doucet's
authors, Claudel, Gide, Verlaine, and the rest, form a distinct group with
its prevailing colors, styles, and motifs. Yet to a degree these are negative
virtues. If it is hardly a question of the emperor's new clothes, one nevertheless
understands why the wits of the time affected to see in Doucet's
ensemble of book furniture chiefly the "insistence on detail" characteristic
of a grand couturier (p. 157). Legrain's great achievements as a
binder lay ahead.

After he completed his bindings for Doucet in 1919, he continued to
work for him as a designer of furniture and other objects. Indeed, as
Jacques Guignard is careful to emphasize: "until the end of his life
binding remained only a secondary preoccupation with him, and he
never forgot what he had been from the first: a decorator."[202] Legrain had
shown his bindings with success at the Société des Artistes Décorateurs
in 1919, and he did not lack for other clients. As he continued to exhibit
each year at the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, and beginning in 1922

at the Salon d'Automne, interest in his work grew apace. From the latter
year onward articles about his bindings appeared with increasing frequency
in periodicals devoted to art, decoration, and book collecting.[203]
He could now pick and choose among clients, and sometimes even among
books, and he no longer had to produce nearly 200 bindings a year. His
services were sought by the more adventurous bibliophiles of the day,
among them Baron Robert de Rothschild and Hubert de Montbrison.

It was only after Legrain had left Doucet, incidentally, that his work
began fully to reflect the spirit of the often quoted dictum which he pronounced
in 1923: "Each binding is the frontispiece to each book; it
synthesizes the work, it is the frame which should embellish and give
value to it."[204] Two descriptions of bindings provided by Legrain himself
offer examples of his practice. Of a binding on Maeterlinck's Serres
[205] chaudes (No. 644) he wrote: "a few circles and two curved lines on a
background of orange will suggest the creepers of rich tropical vegeta-
[206] tion," and of a binding of 1922 on Roland Dorgelès' Les croix de bois
(No. 246): "The wooden crosses . . . will be black on a silver background
to create a striking ensemble in harmony with the speculations of the
book."[207] Further examples are provided by two maquettes in the New
York Public Library, both rendered in 1921 by René Kieffer for Baron
[208] Robert de Rothschild. The first is on René Boylesve's Nymphes dansant
avec les satyrs of 1920 (No. 103). This design, which is carried out on
bottle green calf, decorated in silver with inlays of black morocco, suggests
a fountain with a single jet. (Legrain explains his correction of the
lettering in a note: "Les naïades sont des satyrs.") The second was de-
[209] signed for Oscar Wilde's Ballade de la géôle de Reading of 1918 with
wood engravings by Daragnès (No. 1219), perhaps of all livres d'art the
one most frequently selected for extra binding during the 1920s. Legrain
alone decorated no fewer than 12 copies. Executed on black calf with the
chains in silver, it may be preferred in its powerful simplicity to the more
elaborate binding of 1929 for the same work which will be shown later
in the lecture.

Here I should note that I have worked with actual bindings wherever
possible. Starting with my own collection, I have drawn particularly on
the holdings of the New York Public Library, the Yale University Library,
and the Stanford University Library. But in the interest of comprehensiveness
I have supplemented these resources by reproductions
from secondary works: from Pierre Legrain relieur of 1965, which includes

the standard catalogue of his bindings; from the third volume of
Devauchelle's La reliure en France de ses origines à nos jours of 195961;
and from Rose Adler's Reliures, a portfolio of 1929 surveying contemporary
binding. The volumes in the New York Public Library require
a brief description. With one exception they were received from
George Blumenthal in 1937. They were bound for Mrs. Florence Blumenthal,
an American living in Paris, in the years following the award of
the Prix Blumenthal to Legrain. Mrs. Blumenthal was an ardent patron
of literature, the friend of Proust and Valéry, as well as a bibliophile.
Five of her bindings are unrecorded in the standard catalogue, and others
are listed but not described. They show her commissions developing
from relatively simple designs on modest first editions to elaborate compositions
on large-scale livres d'art, a typical progression, one imagines,
among Legrain's clients of the later 1920s. The exception mentioned
above is one of three albums, and by far the most important, in which
Legrain near the end of his life collected the maquettes for his bindings.[210]
This large folio contains 96 drawings in black and white and in color,
many with instructions to the binders, though these are usually laconic,
his rule obviously being that design was his province, its realization his
binders'. The drawings cover his entire career from 1917 to 1929 and are
mounted, with some divergences, in something approaching chronological
order. There is no more significant volume for the study of his work.

A new phase in Legrain's work had begun by 1923. Hitherto he had
relied on Kieffer and others to make bindings from his maquettes at
their own establishments, but now increasing custom led him to improvise
an atelier with the interior decorators Briant and Robert. A year
later he removed to his own premises, and though he shifted their location
several times, he henceforth had his staff of workers to realize his
conceptions. By this time the simplicity and purity which he had initially
advocated were no longer dominant aspirations. If he still deplored
literal representation, such as a rose window on Huysmans' La cathédrale
or the outline of the Acropolis on Renan's Prière sur l'acropole, he freely
admitted allusive designs, emphasizing once more that the binding was
an "introductory frontispiece, . . . which by its color, manner, decorative
spirit, and ordering after a fashion announces the text it contains."[211]
From this liberated position he began to create bindings which approached
those of the pre-War binders themselves in complexity, though
they were composed of very different decorative elements.

Looking through the plates to Pierre Legrain relieur, which reproduce
more than 300 bindings in predominantly chronological arrangement,

one sees how vastly Legrain extended his decorative scope during
this period. It was then that he was able to take full advantage of the good
luck which Paul Bonet later discerned in reviewing Legrain's career:
"He had known how to look at cubism and abstract art,—no one yet in
the little world of binding was aware of these things—he, who came with
fresh eyes and without prejudices, understood the new road that had
opened up, [and] he entered upon it."[212] The use of typographical lettering
continued to be a mainstay, but there were many new departures.
More and more of his designs are asymmetrical. Arrangements of repeated
small squares or circles are common, as are parallel lines, whether
continuous or broken into dots, now straight, now curved, now crossed.
Inlays are the rule, and, as Guignard points out, Legrain felt free to employ
incrustations of unaccustomed materials: metals, rare woods, or
mother-of-pearl.[213] Here is a pair of examples of this practice, drawn
from his earliest bindings for Mrs. Blumenthal in 1925. Relatively simple
designs for literary first editions, they rely chiefly on novel substances
[214] for their effect: black calf with mother-of-pearl inlays for André Gide's
La porte étroite of 1909 and two tones of brown calf surrounding an oval
of stained and polished wood with a translucent facing for the same au-
[215] thor's Isabelle of 1911.

Since he was now binding illustrated books as well as literary texts,
he sometimes drew inspiration from a volume's graphic contents. This
was true, for example, of his many bindings for Schmied's notable books
of 1924 and 1925. The directly representational bindings of earlier years
are far less in evidence, though they still occur. An example is Octave
[216] Mirbeau's Le journal d'une femme de chambre (No. 698), bound between
1922 and 1924, the pattern of seeming bars on which actually
derives from the book's wrappers simulating a chambermaid's ledger.
But enough has been said to suggest Legrain's wonderful fertility of
invention.

We come now to the period in which Legrain in fact became the "uncontested
master" of French binding. During the early 1920s when his
rising reputation and increasing clientele were beginning to make perceptible
inroads on the position of traditional binders, their acknowledged
leader remained Henri Marius Michel. This magnificent veteran
had entrusted the active management of his atelier to Georges Cretté in
the years following the latter's return to Paris in 1919, but he remained
vigorous and alert to what was going on in his world. Upon hearing his
young friend Georges Blaizot, son of the bookdealer Auguste Blaizot,
express his pleasure in the bindings which Legrain had displayed at the

Société des Artistes Décorateurs, he mockingly remarked: "So, young
man, you admire that, decorative art created with a square, a compass,
and a drawing pen."[217] Yet in other moods he was capable of a detached
response to the changes going on around him. Speaking to the students
of the École des Arts Décoratifs in 1922, when he was 76, he conceded: "I
am no longer regarded as a revolutionary. Just as in politics a person always
seems reactionary to someone, in decorative art, a person is always
pompous and pretentious [pompier] to the following generation and
more than pompous and pretentious [vieux pompier] to the very young.
You will be the same in your turns, but since decorative art is a long
chain in which each new generation comes to forge a new ring, it suffices
that the one which you will bring should intelligently fill its place for
you to leave an honorable trace there."[218]

By presenting Legrain's challenge to traditional binding to public
view, the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs of 1925 sealed his reputation.
Even Clément-Janin, by no means a friendly observer, conceded in L'Art
vivant that "Legrain, who is enjoying a recent access of fame, well symbolizes
our epoch through his bindings"[219] and illustrated his article with
reproductions of six of Legrain's creations. Indeed, they were illustrated
everywhere in reviews of the Exhibition as ranking Art Deco objects.[220]
The opposition between old and new came to be summed up by the work
of Marius Michel on the one hand and the work of Legrain on the other.
To feel the impact of this confrontation, we cannot do better than consider
two copies of the edition of Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau which
was published in 1924 with illustrations by Bernard Naudin. The two
generations of the Blaizot family commissioned bindings for this book,
[221] the father from Marius Michel and the son from Legrain. The first,
which is reproduced from the third volume of Devauchelle's La reliure
en France (after page 90), is decorated with one of the master's richest
patterns of floral ornamentation. It is an uncompromising example of
[222] le style 1900, a superb anachronism. The second, which serves as the
frontispiece to the same volume, shows Legrain, no longer hampered by
theoretical restrictions, applying the full resources of the Art Deco style
to bookbinding. Certainly it is among the earliest in the long series of
Legrain's masterpieces.

No doubt Legrain's career would have developed in much the same
way if there had been no Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in 1925, though
surely not as rapidly, but his triumph there did unmistakably confirm his
arrival. This success was not a matter of chance. As Crauzat points out,
the Jury which selected bindings for display, under the vice-presidency
of René Kieffer, chose to interpret literally general rule four of the Exhibition
which limited admission to "works of a novel inspiration and
a real originality." Hence Marius Michel, faithful to the floral ornament
of Art Nouveau, was excluded altogether, as were a number of other well
known binders in traditional modes. The binders shown, in a somewhat
irregular and scattered way, included true innovators like Legrain,
Schmied, and Bonfils; a bevy of relieurs-femmes like Rose Adler, Germaine
Schroeder, and Jeanne Langrand; and some long-established artisans
who had admitted elements of modernity into their work like
Canape, Gruel, Noulhac, and Kieffer himself. Legrain's mark was everywhere;
it was he who had provided, Crauzat notes, "a marvellous impetus
towards domains previously unknown and unexplored" (2: 177).

Far from being gratified by this evidence of his influence, Legrain
issued a circular-letter entitled Copying is Stealing (Copier, c'est voler),
in which he complained that for several years he had been "the victim of
manifest theft" by a generation of young binders. He pointed particularly
to the School of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, where such
systematic plagiarism was part of the program, as demonstrated by its
display at the Exhibition. The replies which he received bore out his
accusations. A Jury member recalled the "false Legrains" which had been
paraded past him and his fellows. But in general Legrain's friends and
admirers urged him to take the matter quietly, to reflect that this was the
way in which styles imposed themselves. Indeed, René Lalique, who had
been through the same ordeal, told him that it was "the consecration of
success."[223]

Marius Michel died on 9 May 1925, not long after the opening of the
Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. In November of that year the continuing
loyalty of bibliophiles to him was affirmed when the third section of the
great library of René Deschamps-Scrive was sold at auction, its principal
offerings being modern illustrated books in Marius Michel's mosaic bindings.
The sale contained a single binding by Legrain, on Jules Renard's
Histoires naturelles of 1899 with lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec. The
catalogue's comment was laconic: "Curious binding in the modern style"
(lot 275). The critical and financial success of the sale showed that most
bibliophiles still placed their faith in the man whom Henri Beraldi

called "the most considerable artist who had come along in binding since
the Renaissance."[224] A similar reception was accorded the memorial exhibition
of his bindings held in 1927. But though Marius Michel's successor,
Georges Cretté moved away from his style only slowly, and other
binders working in traditional modes retained their clients, Legrain by
the later 1920s had carried the day. When he died in 1929, Crauzat, the
ranking authority, wrote simply: "P. Legrain is `contemporary binding' "
(2: 301). In our own time, of course, Marius Michel and Legrain are no
longer seen as competitors, but in the former's long philosophic perspective
as masters in a succession which runs: Marius Michel, Pierre
Legrain, Paul Bonet, and perhaps Pierre-Lucien Martin.

The years between 1925 and Legrain's death in 1929 saw the appearance
of most of his best work. His understanding of the technique of
binding, about which doubts had remained earlier, was complete. His
workmen stood ready to execute whatever maquettes he gave them, even
if at first they declared his inventions to be impossible of realization.
Though he continued to be in great demand as a decorator, he came
more and more to favor binding, even giving some thought to becoming
an architecte du livre like Schmied, interesting himself in all aspects of
the creation of livres d'art. Under these circumstances he had obviously
left the rule, the square, and the compass far behind him. Indeed, Crauzat
mentions that one of the motives for the increasing elaboration of his
bindings was to discourage plagiarism. "His designs, very simple at the
beginning, have been intentionally complicated, in order to render them
as inimitable as possible, and thereby to dampen the ardor of his rivals"
(2: 29).

Perhaps the work of Legrain's period of full maturity can best be
explored from the actual bindings available to me, either in my own collection
or in the New York Public Library, by considering six volumes
the decoration of which is based in various ways on one of his favorite
patterns: parallel lines. Their arrangement varies from the simple to the
complex, they make use as well of other design elements, their abstractions
sometimes yield symbolic interpretations, but they all belong to
the same family of compositions. When one realizes that Legrain had at
his disposal many other such families, the range of his achievement will
at least be glimpsed.

First, three bindings in which the parallel lines are straight. That on
[225] Valéry's Monsieur Teste of 1927, one of 20 copies on special paper for
subscribers presented by the author to Mrs. Blumenthal, has a criss-cross
pattern of gold, silver, and black lines, irregularly spaced and asymmetrically
arranged, both on its covers and its doublures of dark green morocco.

A modest conception for this period, it is a model of elegance,
appropriate to a small but treasured volume. His more casual composition
[226] for the Comtesse de Noailles' Les forces éternelles of 1920, one of three
identical bindings in calf executed for Mrs. Blumenthal in 1927 (No.
746), was presumably as close as Legrain now cared to come to the sort
of general library bindings he had earlier executed for favored clients.
It shows how Legrain's patterns of parallel lines could be varied by reorientation
and the introduction of non-linear elements. Much more
[227] elaborate, a major undertaking indeed, is Wilde's Deux contes of 1926.
Seemingly another abstract pattern, this complex creation is in fact
based on Schmied's highly original decorative scheme for the book. The
rectangles composed of dots combine the narrow vertical bands illustrating
the first of the two stories, and the narrow horizontal bands illustrating
the second, the whole design then being rotated on its axis some 20
or 25 degrees.

Now, three bindings in which the parallel lines are curved. The sim-
[228] plest of these covers René Boylesve's Souvenirs d'un jardin détruit of
1924 (No. 105), an unpretentious volume with wood engravings by Maximilien
Vox, bound for Mrs. Blumenthal in 1926. Two blocks of parallel
lines in gold on a background of gray morocco sufficed for such a book.
Very different was the commission which Legrain received from the wellknown
bibliophile Dr. Lucien-Graux for a first edition of Baudelaire's
[229] Les paradis artificiels of 1861 inscribed to Edouard Thierry (No. 58), an
exemplaire truffé to which three autograph letters of Baudelaire had
been added. The reversed curves of Legrain's parallel lines are only a
starting point for a design of restrained splendor evoking the opium and
hashish dreams of Baudelaire's text. This binding attracted admiring
notice from the time of its first exhibition in 1927. Equally ambitious
was his creation of the following year for Mrs. Blumenthal's inscribed
[230] copy of Valéry's La jeune Parque of 1925 (No. 1055), a much larger
volume. Here Legrain used his reversed curves to suggest the serpent of
[231] Valéry's text, also shown in a title page vignette.

A second way of sampling the bindings of Legrain's later years is
offered by the concluding maquettes in the New York Public Library
album. These are all large and splendid designs, but I must rest content
[232] with four. That for Gérard d'Houville's Le diadème de flore bound in
1929 (No. 463) was among those selected by Rose Adler for inclusion in
her portfolio of 1929 surveying contemporary binding. On a background
of white morocco, a handful of rings and concentric circles, bands and
triangles, have been thrown in such a way as to suggest through abstract
forms the profusion of nature. This is what Marius Michel's floral ornament
had become by the end of the 1920s. French binders ever since have

been following Legrain's lead in this experiment with color on white.
[233] Perhaps the latest of Legrain's 12 designs for Wilde's Ballade de la géôle
de Reading of 1918 (No. 1215) shows him reinforcing the idea of confinement,
so simply presented eight years before, by a heavily barred
window and a massive grill set in a gray wall. The unusual number of
verbal instructions on the maquette were necessitated by the abundance
[234] of mosaic work involved. Then there are Legrain's designs for the dou-
[235] blures of the album itself, two of his most intricate geometric compo-
[236] sitions, which far exceed in magnificence his composition for the covers
of the volume. Since he elsewhere almost never decorated doublures,
their presence attests to the importance he attributed to this collection of
his maquettes.

Finally, some discussion is required of the controversial topic of
Legrain's bindings for early livres de peintre, all designs dating from the
later 1920s. As has been mentioned, after the 1925 exhibition Legrain
was established as the chosen binder of bibliophiles with modern tastes.
Not only did they give him contemporary books to bind, both first editions
and livres d'art, but they also sought out surviving copies in sheets
of the pre-War livres de peintre which they were just beginning to collect.
So it happened that these books bound by Legrain, or by binders
like Cretté who came gradually to work in an idiom related to his, exist
in some abundance. It is usually assumed that this is an altogether happy
conjunction resulting in modern books in modern bindings.

Yet questions arise. When a binder addresses himself to an unillustrated
book, it may well suffice to declare with Rose Adler that he is "at
the service of the text."[237] But when the book is illustrated, the same
principle suggests that he should show a comparable awareness of the
illustrations. Now, as Jacques Guignard has remarked, Legrain was "impervious
to the manner of certain contemporary painters; his strict,
classical style seems to take no account of that of the peintre-graveur."[238]
This observation is particularly true of the livres de peintre which he
bound most frequently: the 11 copies of Verlaine's Parallèlement of 1900
illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, the five copies of Longus' Daphnis et
Chloé of 1902 illustrated by the same artist, and the three copies of Jules
Renard's Histoires naturelles of 1899 illustrated by Toulouse-Lautrec.
The carefully unfinished lithographs of these volumes, so shadowy in
Bonnard's case that uncomprehending contemporary critics dismissed
them as "uncertain" and "indecisive," remain obstinately uncorrelated
with the precise compositions which Legrain designed for the bindings
of the books in which they appear. Of the most successful it may be

said that the relationship is neutral, much as with a Jansenist binding.
[239] Witness this well-known creation for Parallèlement (No. 1153). In the
[240] least successful, such as this copy of Daphnis et Chloé (No. 583), Legrain's
aggressive geometry clashes radically with Bonnard's cloudy drawings.

Insofar as harmony between binding and illustrations is concerned,
if not in other ways, Legrain's even more numerous bindings for another
group of 20th century illustrated books are far more satisfactory. I have
in mind the books of the masters of Art Deco illustration, of Barbier, of
Laboureur, and in particular of Schmied. The favor enjoyed by Schmied
among collectors of livres d'art has been described in an earlier lecture.
With good reason the collectors, particularly of his notable books of the
mid-1920s, found a natural affinity between them and the novel style
which Legrain had introduced into binding. So it came about that Legrain
devoted some of his most lavish designs to 12 copies of Daphné, for
example, to nine of Le cantique des cantiques, to seven of Wilde's Deux
contes, and to five of the Comtesse de Noailles' Les climats.

Legrain paid these books the compliment of close study, and in his
bindings he sometimes offered a synthesis of Schmied's decorative conceptions.
His binding for Schmied's edition of Wilde's Deux contes has
already been shown. Equally characteristic are his creations for the two
[241] copies of Le cantique des cantiques (Nos. 112 and 113) which Rose Adler
[242] selected for her portfolio of contemporary bindings. Writing about this
substantial part of Legrain's oeuvre in 1961, when Schmied's reputation
was at its nadir, Georges Blaizot had the delicate task of explaining how
the master could have brought himself to bind so many more of Schmied's
volumes than those of any other artist. Here is his ingenious apology:
"Compared with the bindings designed by Schmied [himself] for the
same works, the bindings of this family show us that Pierre Legrain,
while remaining faithful to the laws of decoration imposed on the book,
knew how to play a flute solo at the threshold of the volume, within
which would swell forth sounds of choirs, now swooning, now roaring,
and of organs."[243] You will see some of Schmied's bindings later in the
lecture.

During these years of intense activity as a designer of bindings, Legrain
was no less busy as a decorator. Jacques Doucet and more recent
clients like Mme. Tachard and Pierre Meyer relied upon him for the
adornment of their apartments, and he had many other commissions
carried out, like his bindings, in his atelier on the Place de Val-de-Grâce.
Meanwhile, his health continued to deteriorate. With a view to concentrating
his efforts on binding, he rented and remodeled a charming and

commodious villa near the residence of the artist H. Laurens. On the
morning of 17 July 1929, when he was about to move there, he died, a
few months before his fortieth birthday. Left behind in his bindery "were
more than a year of work in the course of production" as well as many
projects still to be executed.[244]

Something should be said about the bindings completed after Legrain's
death under the supervision of his stepson, Jacques AnthoineLegrain,
of which 75 are listed in the standard catalogue.[245] Undertaken,
as they were, at the height of his powers, they are for the most part ambitious
indeed, but their execution was not always at the level of those
which he himself lived to see completed. An example is afforded by
[246] Georges Rouault's Paysages légendaires of 1929 bound for Mrs. Blumenthal.
This is one of six copies in which two of the lithographs which
Rouault drew to illustrate his own poems are colored by the artist. Legrain's
conception seems to allude to the final words of the text:

illustrated by a bleak city-scape surmounted by a moon. Legrain's more
hopeful perspective shows the moon against the firmament rather than
the earth. The result is a striking Art Deco design, blemished by the almost
total illegibility of the book's title stamped in blind on the lower
half of the moon. Considering Legrain's mastery of the use of typographic
characters in his compositions, one wonders what he would have
thought of the way in which his conception had been rendered. Not open
to objection on the score of obscurity, certainly, is his composition for
[247] Mrs. Blumenthal's copy of Valéry's Poésies of 1929. A large folio, the
book demanded a bold design, yet there is some want of subtlety in its
execution.

We may turn next to Rose Adler, for whom Legrain was the "uncontested
master" of modern binding.[248] Her reputation has never stood
higher than it does today. Indeed her bindings are more eagerly sought
after than those by Legrain himself, if only because they appear so rarely
on the market. Whereas almost 1300 bindings are recorded for his 12
years of activity, her nearly four decades seem to have yielded a small
fraction of that total.

Born in 1890, Rose Adler was a student from 1917 to 1925 at the
École d'Art Décoratif, where she had the active encouragement of Andrée

Langrand, its Director. Her work of this period is exampled in a rare
[249] early binding at the New York Public Library on F. C. Longchamp's
Les vices capitaux of 1922, which is also signed by A. Cuzin as doreur.
The irregular geometric pattern in which she has arranged her panels of
snakeskin and of black and green calf demonstrates how completely she
had already broken with traditional conceptions of binding design.

Rose Adler encountered Jacques Doucet in 1923 at an exhibition of
the Société des Artistes Décorateurs where her bindings were shown. As
impressed by her talent as he was smitten by her beauty and sympathy,
he showed her the bindings Legrain had done for him and commissioned
further work from her hand. Over the next six years, as his friend and
advisor, she bound many of his finest books and manuscripts. The patronage
of other collectors followed, and she became an important figure in
the world of decorative art generally.[250]

Having seen Legrain's achievement, Rose Adler knew exactly what
she herself wanted to do. To introduce the selection from her bindings
shown at the first exhibition of the Société de la Reliure Originale at
Paris in 1947 she told how Legrain in his work for Doucet, "seeking to
reorient binding to adapt it to contemporary literature," tried to make
it a "discrete synthesis" of what "emanated from the text." Thus came
into being "a stripped-down style, in which only the essential remained.
Legrain understood the value of silence, for in expression the danger is
to substitute oneself for the author, to write a sixth act."[251] As we have
seen, Legrain soon put behind him this aesthetic of allusive selectivity,
but Rose Adler remained faithful to it all her life.

In her 1929 portfolio surveying contemporary binding she included
seven examples of her own work. Though elsewhere in this volume she
does full justice to the rich effects achieved by Legrain and others, for
her part she was content to make little count for much, as may be seen
[252] in her creations for Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's Trois contes cruels and
Mérimée's Carmen (plate 37). Only in her composition for Colette's L'En-
[253] vers du music-hall of 1926 (plate 49) did she depart from her accustomed
restraint. Yet the six exuberantly kicking limbs of this design seem subdued
in comparison with the binding by Legrain for the same book which
[254] she reproduces (plate 42) with its suggestion of overlapping beams from
a score of spotlights.

Two bindings by Rose Adler which go beyond my chronological
limits demand to be presented because they can be shown from the books
themselves rather than from reproductions. So spare is her usual work
[255] that her design of 1931 for Tristan Bernard's Tableau de la boxe in the

New York Public Library may in comparison almost be called massive.
As is so often the case with her, lettering provides the main element of
the decor, and the dominant colors, here brown and blue, form an unexpected
combination. There seems to be no obvious allusion in the design,
unless the inset panel is taken to be either a tableau or a boxing ring.
In her later career Rose Adler carried her procedures to further reaches
of refinement. Consider, for example, her binding of 1948 on Toulet's
[256] Les contrerimes of 1930 with etchings by Laboureur, a design inspired,
one surmises, by the shape given the type-page by the writer's verseforms,
rather than by either text or illustrations.

Of the many other workers who at this time created what Rose Adler
called the "binding of sensibility and sentiment—[the] reliure-femme,"[257]
I shall mention only three, her most prominent predecessors, Germaine
Schroeder and Jeanne Langrand, and her most prolific rival, Mme.
Marot-Rodde. The manner in which they adapted Legrain's simpler
patterns is exampled by Germaine Schroeder's design for Giraudoux's
[258] Juliette au pays des hommes of 1926 with colored engravings by Chas
Laborde. In consonance with Legrain's compositions two or three years
earlier, many of which she had executed herself, she provides a checkerboard
pattern of tan morocco across which is festooned the book's title
in green. Legrain's more elaborate style is paralleled in a binding for
[259] Schmied's edition of Vigny's Daphné by Andrée and Jeanne Langrand,
the geometric conception of which reflects Schmied's own decorations,
just as do most of Legrain's bindings for this book. Mme. Marot-Rodde's
[260] creation for Gustave Geffroy's L'Apprentie of 1924 with etchings and
dry points by Auguste Brouet is characteristic of her work: a binding of
brilliant execution the decoration of which is straightforward to the
point of assertiveness. It is hard to reconcile its design with Crauzat's
assertion that "at no point does Legrain's influence make itself felt in her
bindings" (2: 138).[261]

As a designer of Art Deco bindings François-Louis Schmied has for
some years been ranked with Legrain himself, at least if one is to judge
by the prices realized in European and American auction sales. They
were also regarded as equals in the later 1920s, when collectors besieged
Schmied with commissions to bind copies of his own works. In the intervening
decades, however, his bindings, like his books, fell into deepening

disfavor. Writing in 1961 the even-handed Devauchelle largely
ignored him in his comprehensive history of French binding, calling
him, indeed, by the wrong first name.[262] There is a pressing need today
for a monograph on Schmied's bindings, which might take as its point of
departure the 50 odd examples listed by Crauzat with lacquer panels by
Jean Dunand (2: 104-108).

A Swiss, like Schmied himself, and a collaborator with him in annual
exhibitions at the Galérie Georges Petit, Dunand had learned the art of
lacquering from the Japanese craftsman Sugawara before the War. Having
mastered this demanding process, calling for the application of many
layers of lacquer to a metal or wood base over a prolonged period of time
and under controlled atmospheric conditions, he was without a rival in
its use during the 1920s. Beginning in 1925 panels designed by Schmied
and rendered in lacquer by Dunand were incorporated in bindings by
Georges Cretté and others, while later such bindings came to be executed
by Schmied's own staff. Initially these panels had metal as their base and
occupied the entire cover, but the technical problems to which this
operation gave rise led to the employment of smaller panels on ebonite
which were mounted in the covers, an arrangement which allowed
Schmied to make Dunand's renderings of his drawings parts of larger
binding patterns.

Schmied bound only works of his own creation, choosing above all
the books of his great years—more than 20 copies of Le cantique des
cantiques, for example, but also Daphné, Les climats, Les ballades françaises,
his Arabian tales, and Deux contes. The subjects of his designs
came from the decorations of the books themselves: doves, gazelles, gardens,
and particularly the figures of Solomon and his maiden for Le
cantique des cantiques; landscapes and seascapes for Les climats and Les
ballades françaises, abstract patterns for Daphné, and nightingales for
Deux contes. They were rendered by Dunand with a variety and richness
of color, not to mention a freshness and a sparkle, that even mosaic morocco
could rarely match. At their best, indeed, they are among the most
spectacular of all Art Deco bindings.

The Frank Altschul copy of La création at Yale offers an example of
[263] the larger panels by Dunand mentioned above. Indeed, Schmied's ma-
[264] quette, mounted in the volume, is virtually an Art Deco painting. As
will be seen, this composition, which supplements the decorations in
Book I devoted to "Creation through the Word," was reproduced with
resplendent exactness by Dunand. The task of the binder, Cretté, was

simply to make the lacquer panel into the book's front cover. Schmied's
alternative procedure is shown in another volume from the Altschul
collection, Le cantique des cantiques, which was executed by Schmied's
[265] own workers. The panels which Dunand made from two much smaller
[266] maquettes, one of King Solomon and one of a stylized garden, were
[267] mounted in the front and rear covers. This time he radically altered
[268] Schmied's color scheme for the garden, and Schmied himself had the
opportunity of devising a handsome abstract setting for his portrait of
King Solomon.

Schmied also designed bindings, again for his own books, in which
he did not collaborate with Dunand. In a sense, these gave him a freer
hand, since he had the whole cover at his disposal, not simply the frame
surrounding the lacquer panel. Signed simply "F.L.S.," they were executed
at his own atelier in the later 1920s. Here is an example on another
[269] copy of La création. At first glance the central panel of galuchat may
seem to have no purpose beyond the contrast it offers to Schmied's abstract
frame. Then one realizes that the line of large white bubbles is intended
as nothing less than a symbol of germination, the emergence of
life itself from inanimate matter.

Our attention is next claimed by the beginnings of two binders who
were to go on to long and distinguished careers, Georges Cretté and
Henri Creuzevault. In contrast to the more celebrated Pierre Legrain
and Paul Bonet, they not only designed bindings, they executed them,
and latterly there has been some disposition among their admirers to
claim superiority for them on this score over mere maquettistes.[270] For
Cretté, indeed, the distinction was crucial. In a rare confession of faith
he wrote in 1947: "The only allowable fantasy [for a binder] is what the
métier can realize; thus, for me, the role of the technician is as important
as that of the artist and I can't conceive a binding without taking an
active part in its execution."[271] However, we are concerned with manifestations
of the Art Deco style, where Legrain's contribution is hors
concours, and this debate need not concern us.

Cretté was born near Paris in 1893. A brilliant student of decorative
design and of binding at the École Estienne, he entered the atelier of
Marius Michel in 1911, where he became the master's "pupil, his preferred
disciple, almost his adopted son."[272] After a long and difficult
War, much of which he spent in German captivity, he returned to the
atelier in 1919. By this time old and sick, Marius Michel made Cretté
first its effective director and in 1925 its proprietor. The signatures of

both are sometimes to be found on the firm's bindings before this date;
afterwards for at least five years the formula was "G. Cretté successeur
de Marius Michel," a signature that continued to be used for certain
kinds of bindings well into the 1940s.

While Marius Michel was alive, the firm's avowed policies of decoration
did not change, though a receptivity to new ideas became apparent.
When Cretté took over, he issued a circular which read in part:
"Formed by that great artist Marius Michel, I hope on the one hand to
continue the beautiful realizations of my predecessor and on the other
hand to adapt to the classical and elegant methods of execution, which he
conserved so well, the conceptions of modern decorative art."[273] Many of
the bindings which Cretté created were of a transitional nature, half-way
houses in which floral ornament is selectively employed. That decorating
[274] the large paper edition of Proust's A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur of
1920, one of 50 copies, is a model of delicate restraint (No. 460).[275] In his
more modern conceptions, far from copying Legrain, Cretté gradually
evolved his own style, which at this period often involved "the play of
lines," both in gold and in blind. An example is offered by Émile Ver-
[276] haeren's Les campagnes hallucinées, of 1927, the midnight black of
which is in harmony with the wood engravings and lithographs by Frank
Brangwyn serving as its illustrations. When required by the book in
hand, however, Cretté did not disdain Art Deco patterns. This was true
in particular of the many books of Schmied for which he himself
designed bindings, as well as of those on which Schmied commissioned
[277] him to mount lacquer panels by Dunand. A related creation is his binding
for Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's XII élégies of 1925 with lithographs
by Charles Guérin, on which is mounted a large floral enamel by
Jean Goulden, inspired, it may be surmised, by Guérin's compositions
[278] rather than by house tradition. His binding for A. Suarès' Le livre
d'émeraude of 1927 with etchings by Auguste Brouet (No. 531) combines
a cream morocco inlay with the play of lines and dots on blue-green
morocco, in an emblematic design appropriate to this tale of the Brittany
coast.[279]

Like Cretté, but at a much younger age, Henri Creuzevault had the
task of reorienting an established bindery, which served a veteran clientele,
towards an accommodation with Legrain's innovations. Born in
1905, the older son of Louis-Lazare Creuzevault, Henri Creuzevault began
his training as a finisher at the age of 12. He joined his father's atelier
in 1920, and after a few years he was signing the firm's bindings as

doreur.[280] He won his first prize in 1928 from the Société d'Encouragement
des Arts et des Industries. By the following year Crauzat could
write of him: "His wise principles, combined with the passion of a youthful
temperament which is stimulated by the taste of his time and the
claims of a necessary renewal, his perfect technique at the service of a designer
gifted with a highly developed decorative sense, could not fail to
yield excellent results" (2: 54-55). The bold and robust conceptions of
this young master, related to Legrain's yet bearing his individual mark,
soon found their place among the best work of the decade.

Creuzevault's adaptation of Legrain's relatively simple early style for
[281] Gus Bofa's Synthèses littéraires et extra littéraires of 1923 is character-
[282] istically forceful. For Paul Valéry's Discours of 1928 on being received
into the French Academy he created a combination of geometry and
typographic lettering which recalls Legrain without servile imitation.
There is even a hemisphere of mother-of-pearl in the "o" of discours.
[283] For Francis Carco's Quelques-unes of 1931 with etchings by Louis Legrand
his conception hardly differs from the criss-cross mosaic binding
by Legrain already shown for Wilde's Deux contes, yet its more massive
components and darker color scheme result in a quite different effect.
Creuzevault also devoted himself to the books of Schmied and Maurice
Denis, for which he produced stylized representational designs. His con-
[284] ception for Carnets de voyage en Italie of 1925, which concentrates the
landscapes of Denis' book into a single image, provides a reminder that
he was a painter as well as a binder. Notable as Creuzevault's later work
became, his early Art Deco productions remain a distinctive and important
phase of his career.

There are a dozen other binders who would demand treatment if
time were available. There is the elegant Robert Bonfils whose stylized
use of representational elements in his designs, often of the human face
[285] or figure in profile, renders his work identifiable at a glance. This is his
binding for a special number of the Revue musicale of 1921 with an
article by Paul Valéry on the ballet from the Gunst collection at Stanford.
There is the indefatigable René Kieffer, who for 55 years played
"the sedulous ape" to a succession of styles, always with impeccable
technique. Representative of his Art Deco phase is a binding also at Stan-
[286] ford executed in 1927 on Blaise Cendrars' La fin du monde of 1919 with
illustrations after Fernand Léger. But I had better conclude by explaining
why I have not discussed Paul Bonet.

Though he was born in 1889, the same year as Legrain, and though
he had begun to design bindings by the end of 1924, Bonet's domination

of French binding was achieved in the years following 1930. Indeed, he
came to general notice among bibliophiles only at the auction sale of the
library of his first client, R. Marty, in that year.[287] Moreover, if Bonet
was impelled towards his astonishing career by Legrain's example, as he
freely admitted in his Carnets, "to be himself" he determined from the
first to "follow another path,"[288] and he would certainly not have regarded
himself as an Art Deco designer.

Consequently, two examples of Bonet's early work must suffice for our
purposes. They represent the half-bindings which he favored for his own
library, and they are more appealing, to my mind, than Legrain's creations
for Doucet, particularly on volumes designed to be viewed together
as a series. Bonet is severe on his bindings of this period in his
Carnets, but he would perhaps have allowed the comment "an amusing
[289] binding" for this copy of Henri Béraud's Le martyre de l'obèse of 1925,
if half-bindings had been recorded therein. The semi-circles of his composition
correspond exactly to the figure of Béraud's rotund protagonist
[290] as depicted in the illustrations by Gus Bofa. The second example is still
another binding for Colette's L'Envers du music-hall. For the most part
Bonet did indeed avoid the Art Deco style. Two revealing comments
from the Carnets may be cited. There is a plate in this book which shows
his display at the Salon d'Automne of 1927. Of these volumes, bound
chiefly for Marty, Bonet on the whole approved. Only concerning that
on Duhamel's Deux hommes (Carnets, No. 33), an Art Deco creation, did
he admit deprecatingly that "it was in the manner of the times!" In 1930
he similarly dismissed a copy of Dr. Mardrus's Histoire charmante de
l'adolescente Sucre d'Amour with the words: "a binding in the style of
Schmied, alas!" (Carnets, No. 78).

One's final estimate of Art Deco binding depends on one's estimate
of Legrain, though, as I have tried to show, there was much notable work
from other hands during the 1920s. Perhaps Robert Bonfils has offered
the soundest appraisal, surveying his friend's career 35 years after Legrain's
death. He found the supreme distinction of this "artist of Cartesian
intelligence, enthusiastic temperament, and an aesthetic full of
charm" to reside in his ability to create works in which "innovation was
matched by equilibrium" during an epoch when "anarchy and liberty
were confounded."[291] Legrain's bindings do indeed provide the criterion
by which Art Deco bindings in general can be judged, a touchstone
never more useful than at present when so much garish and ill-considered
work is uncritically accepted.

Secondary Works Cited

For works entirely devoted to individual artists, see the following: for
Barbier, see Catalogue, Clément-Janin (4th item), Valotaire (2nd), and Vaudoyer;
for Bonfils, see Burnand and Deshairs; for Cretté, see Garrigou; for
Creuzevault, see Du Pasquier; for Doucet, see Chapon; for Dulac, see Valotaire
(3rd); for Jouve, see Mauclair; for Laboureur, see Allard, Allen, Godefroy,
Loyer, Prinet, and Valotaire (4th); for Legrain, see Breslauer, [Legrain], and
Pierre Legrain relieur; for Schmied, see Clément-Janin (3rd), Guiffrey, Mardrus,
Ritchie, and Roland-Marcel. (Some additional works, published after
1985, are mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the introduction above.)

Adler, Rose. Reliures présenté par Rose Adler. ("L'Art International d'Aujourd'hui,"
17.) Paris: Éditions d'Art Charles Moreau, [1929].

Allard, Roger. "J.-É. Laboureur, un vignettiste de notre temps," Plaisir de
bibliophile, 2 (April 1925), 67-76.

Allen, Robert. Jean-Émile Laboureur: A Centenary Tribute. New York: Alliance
Française, 1977. [Exhibition catalogue.]

Angoulvent, P. J. "The Development of the Book," The Fleuron, 3 (October
1924), 61-72.

Arwas, Victor. Art Deco. London: Academy Editions, 1980.

Barbier, George. "Pochoirs," Arts et métiers graphiques, 3 (1 February 1928),
162-163.

Beraldi, Henri. La reliure du XIXe siècle. 4 vols. Paris: L. Conquet, 1895-97.

Bibliothèque Nationale. Catalogue de l'exposition: la reliure originale. Paris,
1947.

Bonet, Paul. Carnets, 1924-1971: répertoire complet, descriptif et bibliographique
de toutes ses reliures. Preface by Julien Gracq. Paris: Auguste
Blaizot, 1981.

Bonfils, Robert. La gravure et le livre. Paris: Éditions Estienne, 1938.

Breslauer, Martin. [Description of Pierre Legrain's album of maquettes], in
Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Bindings from the Ninth to the
Present Century (catalogue no. 101; London, 1970), item 324 (pp. 266,
268; illustrated on pp. 242, 269, and as frontispiece).

Bruller, Jean. "Le livre d'art en France: essai d'un classement rationnel," Arts
et métiers graphiques, 26 (15 November 1931), 41-66.

Burnand, Robert. "Robert Bonfils: peintre, illustrateur, relieur," Byblis, 8
(1929), 49-51.

Carteret, Léopold. Le trésor du bibliophile: livres illustrés modernes, 1875 à
1945. 5 vols. Paris: L. Carteret, 1946-48.

Catalogue de la bibliothèque de feu M. George Barbier. Introduction by Jean
Giraudoux. 2 vols. Paris: Hôtel Druout, 13-15 December 1932 and 10-13
March 1933.

Cent ans de reliures d'art, 1880-1980. Toulouse: Bibliothèque municipale,
1981. [Exhibition catalogue.]

Chapon, François. Mystère et splendeur de Jacques Doucet 1853-1929. Paris:
J. C. Lattès for Bibliothèque d'art et d'archéologie and Bibliothèque
littéraire Jacques Doucet, 1984.

Clément-Janin, [Hilaire Noël Sebastien]. Essai sur la bibliophilie contemporaine
de 1900 à 1928. 2 vols. Paris: René Kieffer, 1931-32.

Clément-Janin, [Hilaire Noël Sebastien]. "Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs: le livre et ses éléments," L'Art vivant, 15 August 1925, pp.
26-32.

Clément-Janin, [Hilaire Noël Sebastien]. "François-Louis Schmied, peintregraveur-typographe,"
Byblis, 1 (1921-22), 10-14.

Clément-Janin, [Hilaire Noël Sebastien]. "George Barbier, costumier des
muses," Plaisir de bibliophile, 19-20 (1929), 134-147.

Crauzat, Ernest de. La reliure française de 1900 à 1925. 2 vols. Paris: René
Kieffer, 1932.

Deshairs, Léon. "Robert Bonfils," Art et décoration, 55 (January-June 1929),
33-43.

Devauchelle, Roger. La reliure en France de ses origines à nos jours. 3 vols.
Paris: J. Rousseau-Girard, 1959-61.

Du Pasquier, Jacqueline. Henri Creuzevault: naissance d'une reliure. Bordeaux:
Le Musée des Arts Décoratifs de la Ville de Bordeaux, 1984. [Exhibition
catalogue.]

"L'Enluminure au pochoir, un art méconnu," Nouvelles de l'estampe, 21
(May-June 1975), 9-15.

Fleurent, M. "Où va la bibliophilie? une enquête du `Portique,' " Le portique,
2 (Summer 1945), 117-128.

Garrigou, Marcel. Georges Cretté. Toulouse: Arts et Formes, 1984.

Godefroy, Louis. L'Oeuvre gravé de Jean-Émile Laboureur. Paris: Chez
l'Auteur, 1929.

Guerquin, Pierre. "Le beau livre en 1929," Byblis, 8 (1929), xxv-xxix.

Guiffrey, Jean. "Les tendances modernes dans les livres de F.-L. Schmied,"
Byblis, 3 (1924), 95-98.

Hesse, Raymond. Le livre d'après querre et les sociétés de bibliophiles, 19181928.
Paris: B. Grasset, 1928.

Hesse, Raymond. Le livre d'art du XIXe siècle à nos jours. ("A travers l'art
français" series.) Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1927.

[Legrain, Pierre.] [Illustrations of his bindings], Art et décoration, May 1925,
p. 176; L'Amour d'art, August 1925, p. 289.

Loyer, Jacqueline. Laboureur, oeuvre gravé et lithographié. [Paris: Tournon],
1962.

Mardrus, J.-C. Catalogue des livres de F.-L. Schmied: exposés en mars 1927
chez Arnold Seligmann Rey and Co., . . . sous le haut patronage de Madame
la Marquise de Ganay. Preface by Louis Barthou. Paris: Schmied,
1927.

Marius Michel, Jean and Henri. L'Ornementation des reliures modernes.
Paris: Marius Michel et fils, 1889.

Mauclair, Camille. Paul Jouve. ("Les artistes du livre," 22.) Paris: Henri
Babou, 1931.

Mornand, Pierre. "Livres parus et livres à paraître," Le bibliophile, 1 (1931),
45-48.

Périer, Yvonne. "Mises au point," Le jardin du bibliophile, Christmas 1927,
pp. 44-48.

Pierre Legrain relieur. With essays by Jacques Millot and Jacques AnthoineLegrain.
Paris: Auguste Blaizot for Société de la reliure originale, 1965.

Prinet, Jean. "Les illustrations de J.-Émile Laboureur," Le portique, 1 (January
1945), 7-25.

Rapport général de l'exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels
modernes, Paris, 1925, edited by Paul Léon et al. Vol. 7 ("Livre
(Class 15)"). Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1929.

Ray, Gordon N. The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700 to 1914. 2 vols.
New York and Ithaca: Pierpont Morgan Library and Cornell University
Press, 1982.

Ritchie, Ward. François-Louis Schmied, Artist, Engraver, Printer: Some
Memories and a Bibliography. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona
Graduate Library School, 1976.

Roland-Marcel, P.-R. "François-Louis Schmied, peintre, graveur et imprimeur,"
La renaissance de l'art, 11 (1928), 149-156. [In French and English.]

Saudé, Jean. Traité d'enluminure d'art au pochoir. Paris: Éditions de l'Ibis,
1925.

Slatkine Beaux Livres. Livres illustrés 1900-1930. Geneva, 1980.

Strachan, W. J. The Artist and the Book in France: The 20th Century Livre
d'Artiste. London: Owen, 1969.

Très beaux livres modernes illustrés, très riches reliures, ouvrages sur les
beaux-arts, éditions originales, composant la bibliothèque de M. R.
Marty. Introduction by Georges Grappe. (Hôtel Drouot sale, 10-13
February 1930.) Paris: Auguste Blaizot et Fils, 1930.

Valotaire, Marcel. "The Pochoir Process of Colour Reproduction," The
Studio, 92 (1926), 236-240.

Valotaire, Marcel. "George Barbier," The Studio, 93 (1927), 404-410. [In
English.]

Valotaire, Marcel. "Jean Dulac," Byblis, 8 (1929), 111-117.

Valotaire, Marcel. Laboureur. ("Les artistes du livre," 4.) Paris: Henri Babou,
1929.

Valotaire, Marcel. "Le studio d'éditeur," Le bibliophile, 1 (1931), 31-35.

Vaudoyer, J.-L. George Barbier. ("Les artistes du livre," 10.) Paris: Henri
Babou, 1929.

Wallen, Burr, and Donna Stein. The Cubist Print. Santa Barbara, California:
University Art Museum, 1981.

Illustrations

The following list identifies the 183 illustrations that are cited by marginal
numbers in the text of the lectures. (The two-part entry numbers used here
refer to the lecture number and—after the period—to the illustration number
within that lecture.) The marginal numbers in the text are positioned (as in
Ray's typescript) to show where the slides were to be shown; and the entries
that follow identify each slide in terms of the content of the image, the book
or album from which the image comes (frequently with a page or plate number),
and—except for secondary sources—the collection holding the specific
copy that was photographed. For a record of the illustrations grouped by collection,
see the index that follows, under the entries for Columbia (2 items),
Dr. Jack Eisert (4), Harvard (2), Metropolitan Museum of Art (9), Morgan
Library (69), New York Public Library (28) Princeton (18), Stanford (5), and
Yale (33). Thirteen illustrations were presented by Ray from secondary
sources: 4.1, 5.5-7, 5.13-14, 5.27-30, 5.34-36.

The illustrations may be viewed by visiting the website of the Bibliographical
Society of the University of Virginia at {http://etext.virginia.edu/
bsuva/artdeco}. Eight of these illustrations are also included in the present
volume: 1.18, 2.16, 3.24, 3.30, 4.27, 5.26, 5.37, 5.45.

1. The Livre d'Art of the 1920s

2. George Barbier

3. François-Louis Schmied

3.4. Paul Jouve, double plate depicting Kaa's defiance of the monkeys, engraved
by Camille Beltrand and printed by Pierre Bouchet, in Rudyard
Kipling, La chasse de Kaa (Paris: Javal & Bourdeaux, 1930), pp. 98-99.
Gordon N. Ray Collection, Pierpont Morgan Library.

3.5. Pierre Bouchet, typography of opening page of Rudyard Kipling, La
chasse de Kaa (Paris: Javal & Bourdeaux, 1930). Gordon N. Ray Collection,
Pierpont Morgan Library.

4. Jean-Émile Laboureur

5. Pierre Legrain and Art Deco Bookbinding

Index to List of Illustrations

• À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur, 5.49

• À rebours, 5.1

• Adair, A. H., 4.28

• Adler, Rose, 5.29-30, 5.33-38

• Album dédié à Tamar Karsavina, 1.10

• Allard, Roger, 4.2

• Altschul, Frank. See Yale University Library

• Amyot, J., 5.28

• Annonce faite à Marie, L', 5.5

• Aphrodite, 2.33

• Appartement des jeunes filles, L', 4.2

• Apprentie, L', 5.41

• Artisan du Livre, L', 4.32-33

• Au Sans Pareil, 4.12-13, 4.28, 5.35-36, 5.60

• Audin, Marius, 5.51

• Aulard, L'Imprimerie, 4.31

• Babou, Henri, 4.1

• Ballade de la géôle de Reading, 5.9, 5.23

• Ballades françaises, Les, 3.20-21

• Ballets Russes, 1.7

• Banderole, La, 5.7

• Barbier, George, 1.8-10, 1.14, 2.1-30

• Baudelaire, Charles, 5.19

• Beaumont, C. W., 1.9

• Beauté, mon beau souci, 4.3-4

• Beinecke Library. See Yale University Library

• Belle Édition, La, 1.9, 1.13

• Beltrand, Camille, 3.4, 3.10

• Beltrand, Georges, 5.22

• Beltrand, Jacques, 3.10, 5.56

• Bénédictus, Édouard, 1.3

• Béraud, Henri, 5.59

• Bernard, Tristan, 5.37

• Bernouard, Francis, 1.13

• Berque, Jean, 3.7

• Blaizot, Auguste, 2.20, 5.5-7, 5.13-14,
  5.27-28

• Bloch, Camille, 2.1, 2.18-19, 4.2, 4.9-11

• Blumenthal, Florence, 5.10-11, 5.15-16,
  5.18, 5.20-21, 5.31-32

• Blumenthal, George, 5.10-11, 5.15-16,
  5.31-32

• Bofa, Gus, 5.53, 5.59

• Bonet, Paul, 5.59-60

• Bonfils, Robert, 1.15-18, 5.57

• Bonheur du jour, Le, 2.2-7

• Bonnard, Pierre, 5.27-28

• Borel, Pétrus, 2.32

• Boris Gudonov, 1.7

• Bouchet, Pierre, 2.16-17, 2.19, 2.23-25,
  3.1-5

• Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 4.6

• Boulestin, X. Marcel, 4.25

• Boylesve, René, 2.26, 5.8, 5.18

• Brangwyn, Frank, 5.50

• Brouet, Auguste, 5.41, 5.52

• Brunelleschi, Umberto, 1.11

• C., A. S., 1.13

• Calavas, 1.2

• Calmann-Lévy, 5.6, 5.8

• Campagnes hallucinées, Les, 5.50

• Camuset, Georges, 4.30

• Cantique des cantiques, Le, 3.15-17, 5.2930,
  5.44-47

• Carco, Francis, 5.55

• Carmen, 5.34

• Carnets de voyage en Italie, 3.10, 5.56

• Carré, Léon, 5.3

• Carrosse aux deux lézards verts, Le, 2.26

• Cartier, Jacques, 2.31

• Caves du Vatican, Les, 4.31

• Cazotte, Jacques, 4.22

• Cendrars, Blaise, 5.58

• Cent Bibliophiles, Les, 5.1

• Cent Une, Les, 4.34-37

• Cercle Lyonnais du Livre, 3.20-21, 5.51

• Chamontin, Émile, 4.17, 4.19-21. See also
  Livre, Le

• Chansons de Bilitis, Les, 2.13-15

• Chansons madécasses, 4.5

• Chasse de Kaa, La, 3.4-5

• Chelsea Book Club, 4.25

• Chez les Auteurs, 3.6

• Choses de Paul Poiret, Les, 1.5

• Chronology (numbers in italics mean
  that the cited year in each case refers
  

  ---

  128

  
  
  
  to the date of the book, not necessarily
  the binding): 1861: 5.19. 1893: 5.2.
  1896-98: 1.1. 1900: 5.12, 5.27. 1901: 5.4.
  1902: 5.28. 1903: 5.1. 1908: 1.4. 1909:
  5.5, 5.10. 1910: 5.6. 1911: 1.5, 5.11.
  1912: 1.15, 5.5 1913: 1.6-7, 1.9. 1914:
  1.2, 1.8, 1.10-12, 5.3. 1916: 1.14, 5.5
  1917: 5.5. 1918: 1.13, 1.17, 5.5, 5.9, 5.23.
  1919: 1.16, 3.1-3, 4.2, 5.5, 5.58. 1920:
  2.2-5, 4.3-5, 5.8, 5.16, 5.49. 1921: 2.26,
  2.31, 4.6, 4.25, 5.7, 5.8-9, 5.57. 1922:
  1.18, 2.10, 2.13-17, 3.6, 5.7, 5.12, 5.33,
  5.37. 1923: 1.3, 2.8, 3.8, 5.53. 1924: 2.67,
  3.9, 3.11-14, 5.4, 5.13-14, 5.18, 5.4041.
  1925: 2.9, 2.12, 3.7, 3.10, 3.15-17,
  4.7-11, 4.22, 4.26-27, 5.10-11, 5.20-21,
  5.29-30, 5.44-47, 5.51, 5.56, 5.59. 1926:
  2.11, 2.32, 3.18-19, 3.23-25, 4.12-13,
  4.15-16, 4.18, 4.30, 5.17, 5.18, 5.35-36,
  5.39, 5.60. 1927: 2.1, 2.18-19, 3.20-21,
  3.26-29, 4.28-29, 4.34-37, 5.15, 5.16-17,
  5.19, 5.34, 5.50, 5.52, 5.58. 1928: 2.2022,
  3.22, 3.30, 4.14, 4.19-21, 4.23, 5.20,
  5.22, 5.42-43, 5.48, 5.54. 1929: 2.23-25,
  2.27, 3.31, 4.1, 4.17, 5.24-26, 5.31-32.
  1930: 3.4-5, 3.32, 4.31-33, 4.38-40, 5.38.
  1931: 4.24, 5.37, 5.55. 1934: 2.28-30.
  1936: 2.33. 1948: 5.38.

• Clara d'Ellebeuse, 1.15

• Claudel, Paul, 5.5

• Climats, Les, 3.9, 3.11-12

• Colette, 4.12-13, 5.35-36, 5.60

• Columbia University Library, 1.9, 1.12

• Contes (Perrault), 4.14

• Contrerimes, Les, 4.38-40, 5.38

• Corrard, Pierre, 1.10, 2.13-15

• Coulouma, Robert, 2.27, 4.3-4, 5.52

• Cowper, William, 4.24

• Création, La, 3.30, 5.42-43, 5.48

• Cretté, Georges, 5.43, 5.49-52

• Creuzevault, Henri, 2.33, 5.53-56

• Croix de bois, Les, 5.7

• Crusoe, Robinson, 2.32

• Cuzin, Adolphe, 5.33

• Daphné, 3.13-14, 5.40

• Daphnis et Chloè, 5.28

• Daragnès, Jean-Gabriel, 5.9, 5.20-21, 5.23

• Darantière, Maurice, 5.55

• Davis, Ronald, 4.24

• Davray, Henry-D., 5.9, 5.23

• Defoe, Daniel, 2.32

• Denis, Maurice, 3.10, 5.56

• Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline, 5.51

• Designs on the Dances of Vaslav Nijinsky,
  1.9

• Dessins sur les danses de Vaslav Nijinsky,
  1.9

• 200 chambres, 200 salles de bain, 4.29

• Deux contes (Wilde), 3.18-19, 5.17

• Devambez, Éditions d'Art, 5.52

• Devauchelle, Roger, 5.13-14

• Devil in Love, The, 4.22

• Diadème de flore, Le, 5.22

• Diderot, Denis, 4.6, 5.13-14

• Discours (Valéry), 5.54

• Discours du docteur O'Grady, Les, 4.17

• Diverting History of John Gilpin, The,
  4.24

• Divertissements des princesses qui s'ennuient,
  1.17

• Dorgelès, Roland, 5.7, 5.53

• Doucet, Jacques, 5.5

• Douze césars, Les, 3.22

• XII élégies, 5.51

• Ducret, Charles, 5.33

• Duhamel, Georges, 5.5

• Dunand, Jean, 3.23-27, 5.43, 5.45, 5.47

• Dunoyer de Segonzac, André, 4.1, 5.7, 5.37

• Duval, Paulette, 2.19

• Éditions de la Guirlande, 2.26

• Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française.
  See Nouvelle Revue Française, Éditions
  de la

• Éditions de la Sirène, 5.58

• Éditions d'Art Devambez, 5.52

• Éditions du Raisin, 4.30

• Eisert, Jack, 4.7-8, 4.32-33

• Ellebeuse, Clara d', 1.15

• Émile-Paul Frères, 5.20-21, 5.39, 5.59

• Envers du music-hall, L', 4.12-13, 5.3536,
  5.60

• Estève, Joseph, 3.22

• Falbalas et fanfreluches, 2.8-12

• Falké, Pierre, 2.32

• Fasquelle, E., 5.12

• Faune parisienne, 5.4

• Fayard, A., 5.16

• Ferenczi, J., & Fils, 5.18

• Fêtes galantes, 2.21-22

• Fin du monde, La, 5.58

• Flament, Albert, 2.16-17

• Flaubert, Gustave, 3.8

• Floréal, 1.2

• Forces éternelles, Les, 5.16

• Fort, Paul, 3.20-21

• Frapereau, Félix, 4.19-21

• Fry, Charles Rahn. See Princeton University
  Library

---

129





• Gallimard, 4.31. See also Nouvelle Revue
  Française, Éditions de la

• Gasperini, E., 2.27

• Gautier, Théophile, 2.27

• Gazette du bon ton, La, 1.6-7

• Geffroy, Gustave, 5.41

• Gide, André, 3.7, 4.31, 5.10-11

• Giraudoux, Jean, 4.34-37, 5.39

• Golden Cockerell Press, 4.23

• Gondrexon, J., 4.29

• Goulden, Jean, 3.6, 5.51

• Gourmont, Remy de, 4.9-11

• Grasset, Eugène, 1.1

• Grégoire, Frédéric, 5.41

• Guérin, Charles, 5.51

• Guérin, Maurice de, 2.20

• Guirlande, Éditions de la, 2.26

• Guirlande des mois, La, 1.14

• Gunst, Morgan A. See Stanford University
  Library

• Harvard University Library, 2.21-22

• Heinemann, William, 4.22

• Helleu & Sergent, 5.50

• Hilsum, Robert, 4.14

• Histoire de la princesse Boudour, 3.23-25

• Histoire charmante de l'adolescente Sucre
  d'Amour, 3.26-29

• Homme en tête, L', 5.5

• Houghton Library. See Harvard University
  Library

• Houghton Mifflin, 4.22

• Houville, Gérard d', 1.11, 5.22

• Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 5.1

• Imprimerie Aulard, L', 4.31

• Imprimerie Lahure, L', 5.41, 5.56

• Imprimerie Rigal, L', 4.31

• Iribe, Paul, 1.4

• Isabelle, 5.11

• Jaloux, Edmond, 2.1, 2.18-19, 4.19-21

• Jammes, Francis, 1.15

• Jardin des caresses, Le, 5.3

• Javal & Bourdeaux, 3.4-5, 5.54

• Jeune Parque, La, 5.20-21

• Jonquières, Henri, 2.32

• Jourde, A., 4.34-37

• Journal d'un femme de chambre, Le, 5.12

• Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1.11

• Jouve, Paul, 3.1-4

• Juliette au pays des hommes, 5.39

• Karsavina, Tamara, 1.10

• Kieffer, René, 1.16, 5.5-6, 5.8-9, 5.58

• Kipling, Rudyard, 3.1-5

• Laborde, Charles, 5.39

• Laboureur, Jean-Émile, 1.13, 4.1-40, 5.3536,
  5.38

• Laboureur, 4.1

• Laclos, Choderlos de, 2.28-30

• Lacomblez, L., 5.6

• Lacou, Marcel, 5.56

• Lacretelle, Jacques de, 4.7-8

• Lafcadio, 4.31

• Lahure, L'Imprimerie, 5.41, 5.56

• Lainé, Émile, 5.56

• Langrand, Andrée, 5.40

• Langrand, Jeanne, 5.40

• Larbaud, Valery, 4.3-4, 4.29

• Le Huby, Ph., 4.28

• Léger, Fernand, 5.58

• Legrain, Pierre, 5.5-12, 5.14-20, 5.22-32,
  5.36

• Legrand, Edy, 2.31

• Legrand, Louis, 5.4, 5.55

• Lepape, Georges, 1.5-6

• Lepère, Auguste, 5.1

• Lévy, 1.3

• Liaisons dangereuses, Les, 2.28-30

• Libraires-Imprimeurs Réunies, 5.2

• Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1.1

• Librairie des Bibliophiles, 5.33

• Livre, Le, 3.8, 4.15-21, 5.22

• Livre Contemporain, Le, 2.23-25

• Livre de la jungle, Le, 3.1-3

• Livre de la vérité de parole, 3.31

• Livre d'émeraude, Le, 5.52

• Longchamp, Frédéric Charles, 5.33

• Longus, 5.28

• Louÿs, Pierre, 2.13-15, 2.33

• Lutetia, 1.17

• Mac Orlan, Pierre, 2.32

• Maeterlinck, Maurice, 4.32-33, 5.6

• Manesse, Georges Henri, 5.2

• Maquet, 1.5, 1.8

• Mardrus, J.-C., 3.23-32, 5.42-43, 5.48

• Marius Michel, Henri, 5.1, 5.13

• Marot-Rodde, Mme., 5.41

• Martin, Charles, 1.12, 2.1

• Marty, André-Édouard, 1.7, 2.33, 5.22

• Martyre de l'obèse, Le, 5.59

• Mas, Émile, 5.2

• Masques et les personnages de la comédie
  italienne, Les, 1.11

• Maurois, André, 4.15-18

• Maylander, Émile, 5.3

• Mercure de France, 1.15

• Mérimée, Prosper, 5.34

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2.1, 2.1619,
  4.22, 4.28-30

---

130





• Meunier, Charles, 5.2, 5.4

• Meynial, Jules, 1.14, 1.18, 2.2-12, 2.16-17

• Miomandre, Francis de, 1.9

• Mirbeau, Octave, 5.12

• Modes et manières d'aujourd'hui, 1.8,
  1.18

• Monsieur Teste, 5.15

• Moreau, Charles, Éditions d'Art, 5.2930,
  5.34-36

• Morgan (Pierpont) Library (Gordon N.
  Ray Collection), 1.4, 1.13, 1.15-16,
  2.26-33, 3.1-5, 3.7, 3.10, 3.13-18, 3.30,
  4.2, 4.5-6, 4.9-18, 4.23, 4.25-27, 4.3437,
  5.1-4, 5.12, 5.17, 5.19, 5.38-41, 5.4856,
  5.59-60

• Mornay, A. & G., 2.27, 5.53

• Naudin, Bernard, 5.13-14

• Nero, 3.22

• Neveu de Rameau, Le, 5.13-14

• New Keepsake for the Year 1921, The,
  4.25

• New York Public Library, 4.3-4, 4.19-21,
  4.24, 4.31, 4.38-40, 5.8-11, 5.15-16,
  5.18, 5.20-26, 5.31-33, 5.37

• Nijinsky, Vaslav, 1.9

• Noailles, Anna Elisabeth de Brancovan,
  comtesse de, 3.9, 3.11-12, 5.16

• Nouvelle Revue Française, Éditions de
  la, 4.3-8, 4.26-27, 4.31, 5.5, 5.11, 5.15,
  5.32, 5.37, 5.49, 5.57

• Nymphes dansant avec les satyrs, 5.8

• Offrande lyrique, L', 3.7

• Pain dur, Le, 5.5

• Paradis artificiels, Les, 5.19

• Parallèlement, 5.27

• Parny, Évariste, 4.5

• Paysages légendaires, 5.31

• Pellet, Gustave, 5.4

• Perrault, Charles, 4.14

• Personnages de comédie, 2.16-17

• Petiet, H.-M., 4.38-40, 5.38

• Petits et grands verres, 4.28

• Photiadès, Vassiliaky, 5.33

• Physiologies des quais de Paris, 5.2

• Piazza, H., 2.21-22, 5.3

• Pichon, L., 5.9, 5.23

• Pierpont Morgan Library. See Morgan
  (Pierpont) Library

• Pierre Legrain relieur, 5.5-7, 5.27-28

• Plante et ses applications, La, 1.1

• Poémes en prose (Guérin), 2.20

• Poésies (Valéry), 5.32

• Poiret, Paul, 1.4-6

• Porte étroite, La, 5.10

• Porteret, 5.31

• Portrait de Dorian Gray, Le, 4.19-21

• Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 5.19

• Princeton University Library (Charles
  Rahn Fry Collection), 1.1-3, 1.5-8,
  1.10-11, 1.14, 1.17-18, 2.2, 2.8-12

• Pro Amicis, 5.55

• Proust, Marcel, 5.49

• Quelques-unes, 5.55

• Raisin, Éditions du, 4.30

• Ramiro, Erastène, 5.4

• Ray, Gordon N. See Morgan (Pierpont)
  Library

• Régnier, Henri de, 1.16

• Reidel, H., 2.2-7

• Reliure en France de ses origines à nos
  jours, La, 5.13-14

• Reliures présenté par Rose Adler, 5.2930,
  5.34-36

• Renan, Ernest, 3.15-17, 5.29-30, 5.44-47

• Rencontres de monsieur de Bréot, Les,
  1.16

• Revue musicale, 5.57

• Rigal, L'Imprimerie, 4.31

• Robes de Paul Poiret, Le, 1.4

• Roman de la momie, Le, 2.27

• Rouault, Georges, 5.31

• Rousseau-Girard, J., 5.13-14

• Ruth et Booz, 3.32

• Salammbô, 3.8

• Satie, Erik, 1.12, 1.18

• Saudé, Jean, 1.3, 2.26

• Savine, Albert, 3.18-19, 5.17

• Schmied, François-Louis, 2.13-14, 2.1617,
  2.20, 3.1-3, 3.6-9, 3.11-32, 5.17,
  5.29-30, 5.40, 5.42-48

• Schroeder, Germaine, 5.39

• Schwob, Marcel, 2.23-25

• Séguy, Eugène Alain, 1.2

• Selonique, le Macédoine, l'Athos, 3.6

• Sentimental Journey through France and
  Italy, A, 4.23

• Serre, Lucien, et Cie., 4.24

• Serres chaudes, 5.6

• Sheherazade, 1.9

• Silbermann, 4.7-8

• Silences du Colonel Bramble, Les, 4.1516,
  4.18

• Sirène, Éditions de la, 5.58

• Société de femmes bibliophiles, 4.34-37

• Société de la Gravure sur Bois Originale,
  5.34

---

131





• Société du Livre Contemporain, 3.1-3,
  3.9, 3.11-12

• Société du Mercure de France, 5.10

• Songe d'une femme, Le, 4.9-11

• Sonnets du docteur, Les, 4.30

• Souvenirs d'un jardin détruit, 5.18

• Spectre de la rose, Le, 1.9-10

• Spencer Collection (New York Public Library),
  4.3-4, 4.38-40, 5.8-9, 5.18, 5.2026,
  5.33, 5.37

• Sports et divertissements, 1.12

• Stanford University Library (Morgan A.
  Gunst Collection), 3.22, 3.31-32, 5.5758

• Sterne, Laurence, 4.23

• Suarès, André, 5.5, 5.52

• Suetonius, 3.22

• Supplément au voyage de Bougainville,
  4.6

• "Sur la vie," 5.5

• Suzanne et le Pacifique, 4.34-37

• Synthèses littéraires et extra littéraires,
  5.53

• Tableau de la boxe, 5.37

• Tableau des grands magasins, 4.26-27

• Tagore, Rabindranath, 3.7

• Tolmer, 2.31

• Toulet, Paul-Jean, 4.38-40, 5.38

• Toussaint, Franz, 5.3

• Toye, Nina, 4.28

• Trois contes cruels, 5.34

• Types de l'armée américaine en France,
  1.13

• Uzanne, Octave, 5.2

• Valéry, Paul, 5.15, 5.20-21, 5.32, 5.54

• Valmy-Baysse, Jean, 4.26-27

• Valotaire, Marcel, 4.1

• Variations, 1.3

• Vasseur, Le, 2.28-30

• Vaudoyer, Jean-Louis, 1.10

• Verhaeren, Émile, 5.50

• Verlaine, Paul, 2.21-22, 5.27

• Vernant, A., 4.3-4

• Vers et Prose, 5.5

• Vices capitaux, Les, 5.33

• Vie des abeilles, La, 4.32

• Vie des termites, La, 4.33

• Vie et les aventures . . . de Robinson Crusoé,
  La, 2.32

• Vies imaginaires, 2.23-25

• Vigny, Alfred de, 3.13-14, 5.40

• Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Philippe Auguste
  Mathias, comte de, 5.34

• Vingt-cinq costumes pour le théâtre, 2.1,
  2.18-19

• Vogel, 1.12

• Vollard, Ambroise, 5.27-28

• Vox, Maximilien, 5.18

• Voyages et glorieuses découvertes, 2.31

• Watson Library (Metropolitan Museum),
  2.1, 2.18-19

• Whittelsey, Elisha, 2.16-17, 4.22

• Wilde, Oscar, 3.18-19, 4.19-21, 5.9, 5.17,
  5.23

• Yale University Library (Frank Altschul
  Collection), 2.3-7, 2.13-15, 2.20, 2.2325,
  3.6, 3.8-9, 3.11-12, 3.19-21, 3.2329,
  5.42-47