University of Virginia Library

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,[19] 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 its well-stocked museum, where Watteau and Ingres were represented, must have nourished his artistic vocation. He found a patron in A. Lotz-Brissonneau, a leading industrialist of Nantes who was later to compile the standard catalogue of Lepère's etchings and wood-engravings.

By 1908 Barbier was in Paris, working with Jean-Paul Laurens at the École des Beaux-Arts.[20] He haunted the Louvre, applying himself particularly to the collections of Greek antiquities. When Vaudoyer met [2.1] 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 English man especially since he then signed his drawings "E.-W. Larry." At his first exhibition at the Boutet de Monvel gallery during the following year his water colors were grouped by categories which matched his predominant interests: Greek dancers, dancers from the Ballets Russes, and "Belles du Moment." Pierre Louÿs, who wrote the preface to the exhibition's catalogue, praised Barbier for having captured the Hellenic spirit with no taint of Roman influence. "Not one of his figures could appear on an authentic Greek vase. But they are part of the same line. It is not imitation, it is continuation."[21]

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

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.[22] 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 record 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. Theartist'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" [2.2] 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, [2.3] 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. [2.4] The design is thus the natural prelude to "Chez la marchande des pavots" (plate 8), in which androgynous opium-smokers of 1920 offer a languorous contrast to the robust dandies of 1814 evoked by Barbier in his Intro- [2.5] 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 [2.6] provides for the public, at the beach in "Au lido" (plate 14) and at the [2.7] 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. [2.8] Seeking to preserve for himself complete freedom of choice, Barbier [2.9] 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 ripper 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 [2.10] "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. [2.11] 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 [2.12] she steps from a Rolls Royce, and "Gluttony" is etherealized into "Lagourmandise."

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.[23] 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 Luc-Olivier 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."[24] 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 time-travelling 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."[25] 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. [2.13] 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

[2.14] (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 [2.15] 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.[26] 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. [2.16] 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, half-waking 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 [2.17] 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:

[2.18] Typical of Barbier's creations are Don Juan in Rostand's La dernière [2.19] 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'Eventailde diamant" at the Folies Bergères.[27]

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 [2.20] 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 dixhuitièmesiècle 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 [2.21] 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 [2.22] 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 [2.23] 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 [2.24] mocking commentary on the saints depicted by Maurice Denis, Clodia [2.25] 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- [2.26] 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 [2.27] liaisons dangereuses. More attractive is Gautier's Le roman de la momieof 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, Clément-Janin 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 moiscertain "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."[29] 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[30] with [2.28] their reproductions. Consider the vignette facing the title page of volume [2.29] 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 [2.30] 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."[31] 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 pochoirillustrations, 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'artau 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 Rapportgénéral 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."[33] 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.[34] 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 Essaisur la bibliophilie contemporaine de 1900 à 1928, even in chapter 11 devoted specifically to colored illustration. Carteret included few pochoirbooks in his detailed listing of outstanding titles in volume 3 of Le trésordu 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.[35] An account of pochoirin 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."[36] 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 bonton, and of later recruits who worked in a similar style like Pierre Falkéand 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 pochoircould 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 françaisof 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 [2.31] 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 [2.32] 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 [2.33] 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'arttended 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 pochoirillustration 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.