University of Virginia Library

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).