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Almanach illustré du père Ubu (XXe Siècle)

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Almanach illustré du père Ubu (XXe Siècle)
Image Not Available for Almanach illustré du père Ubu (XXe Siècle)

Almanach illustré du père Ubu (XXe Siècle)

Artist Pierre Bonnard French, 1867-1947
Author Ambroise Vollard French, 1867-1939
Date1901
DimensionsBook: H: 11 1/8 in. (283 mm); W: 7 3/4 in. (197 mm); Depth: 3/16 in. (5 mm).
Page (untrimmed): H: 11 3/16 in. (284 mm); W: 7 11/16 in. (196 mm).
MediumReproductions: 75 relief etchings in red, blue, or black , incl. 2 on cover. Text: letterpress in black and red with blue. Paper: cream wove paper.
ClassificationBooks
Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss
Object number
1984.281
Not on View
Collections
  • Works on Paper
Published Referencescf. Terrasse, Antoine, Pierre Bonnard, Illustrator: a Catalogue raisonné, New York, 1988, no. 10, repr.

cf. Johnson, Una E., Ambroise Vollard, éditeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes, New York, 1977, no. 167, repr.

cf. Cate, Phillip Dennis, et al., Prints Abound: Paris in the 1890s, from the Collections of Virginia and Ira Jackson and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000, no. 87.

Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, The Artist and the Printer, 1994--1995 (no cat.).Label TextPublisher: Ambroise Vollard Pierre Bonnard, Parallèlement (In Parallel). Text by Paul Verlaine (1900) Pierre Bonnard, Les pastorales de Longus; ou Daphnis et Chloé (Pastorals of Longus; or Daphnis and Chloë). Text by Longus (1902) Maurice Denis, Sagesse (Wisdom). Text by Paul Verlaine (1911) The Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard was one of the leading publishers of livres de peintre or painter’s books. These were deluxe editions matching original prints with a text. For his first project Vollard chose Parallèlement, a collection of poems by Paul Verlaine. He settled on Bonnard to create the prints. Bonnard’s sensuous lithographs were printed with rose-colored ink. For the most part the publication was received poorly. Collectors didn’t consider lithography a fine-art technique. The edition did not sell out for over 20 years. Undaunted, Vollard commissioned Bonnard to create lithographs for a translation of an ancient poem by Longus. Unlike the images for Parallèlement, the designs for Daphnis et Chloé conformed to a rectangular format above five lines of text. Colored ink was replaced with the same gray-black ink as the text, adding to the overall unity of the design. This volume too did not sell well. Many of Vollard's projects took years to complete and some were left unfinished at his death. Sagesse was written by Verlaine in 1873. The poem inspired a series of drawings by Maurice Denis, which Vollard saw in 1891. He knew this would make a wonderful livre de peintre, but two decades would go by before the book was published. For this project, Vollard had Denis’s drawings converted to wood engravings. Vollard went on to produce 45 fine press books with such artists as Redon, Maillol, Rouault, and Picasso. They are now considered some of the finest and most influential in the genre.
Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
1927

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