Spectacular Simone de Beauvoir Archive $380,000-$470,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

An outstanding trove of over 350 original and unpublished signed autograph letters and postcards written by French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, social theorist, and author of the major work of Feminist theory, The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949; 1953 in English), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), is being offered by Christie's-Paris in it Importants livres anciens,  livers d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $380,000-$470,000 (€280,000-€350,000; £250,000-310,000).

Spanning the years 1918-1957, the letters, each 1-10 pages in length and written to her mother, Françoise de Beauvoir (1887-1963), constitute an informal book by de Beauvoir, discussing her childhood and adolescence, life as an independent teacher, her emancipation, etc., and in detail recounts her daily life, travels, her readings (Dumas, Dostoevsky, Saint- Exupery, Faulkner, Celine, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and many detective novels), meetings, and the progress of her literary work.

As the letters progress from youth to adulthood, discussion of her blood family ebbs and the tide flows to the "small family" she was adopted into, whose members, cited many times, included Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques-Laurent Bost, Olga Zuorro, Bianca Bienenfelds, Nathalie Sorokin Fernand, and Stephan Gerassi, and also Merleau-Ponty, Nizan,  Colette Aubry, the Morels, the Guilles, the Leiris, Raymond Aron,  etc.  

There is much discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she met in 1929, opening "a new era" in her life. Several letters detail her life with Sartre: a trip together to Spain in 1931; sojourns in Spain, Italy, Germany - where she joined Sartre  in an internship at the French Institute in Berlin in 1939 - in Greece (July-August 1937) and Morocco (summer 1938). She finds Nuremberg "covered with swastikas," and Morocco "horribly lousy, but extremely attractive." 

She discusses her June 1940 exodus from Paris - Sartre was taken prisoner and would not be released until April of the following year; Simone took refuge in La Poueze. She writes of taking a long bicycle trip with Sartre in the free zone to organize a resistance movement. "There is a dearth here," she wrote Sept. 13, 1940 from Cannes, "and twice I had a breakfast of dry bread." The Liberation and her immediate post-war life are covered.

She writes of her 1947 lecture tour in the United States, where she met novelist Nelson Algren, who took her for a walk on the wild side and became her lover. "New York absolutely delights me and life is delicious" (January 28, 1947). She talks about a trip to Sweden with Sartre, and another in the United States and Mexico with Algren in 1948, then Algeria  the following autumn, and with a ferocious appetite for life she describes her discoveries and impressions. Concurrently, she began The Second Sex: "J’ai envie de travailler le plus possible parce que ce livre sera très long à faire et je voudrais quand même bien qu’il soit fni dans un an," she writes in September 1948; the book would be published a year later. 

Additional Sartre, Algren, an important trip to China in 1955, and more through 1957 when the correspondence ends.

The provenance to the archive is rock-solid: from Henriette, Simone's sister, aka Helene de Beauvoir. Her adopted daughter, Mrs. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, assisted Christie's with the dates to many  letters otherwise dateless.

The significance of this archive cannot be underestimated: it constitutes an epistolary autobiography of one of the towering figures in feminist thought and a major figure in twentieth century French literature.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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The Bible Of Unconscious Buffoonery

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra engraved titlepage.

Imagine that you've written a book that no one will publish; it's considered over-long and looney. So, to pump-up its importance, impress, and tacitly solicit subscriptions, you ask eminent men, oh, around sixty of 'em, to contribute "panegyricke verses upon the Authour and his booke" extolling your wonderfulness and that of your volume. Amazingly, they do. But your contributors ridicule the book.

You include their mockery, anyway. Some attention is better than none. You underwrite the cost of printing the book yourself and in doing so produce one of the great vanity publications ever issued, and if your contributors insult you, well, how flattering to your vanity that these great men took the time to do so.

Such was the case of Thomas Coryat (1577-1617) and his book, Three crude veines are presented in this booke following (besides the foresaid Crudities): no less flowing in the body of the booke, then the Crudities themselues, two of rhetoricke and one of poesie…, popularly known by its title from the engraved titlepage/frontispiece (and subsequent editions) as Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome.

Coryat's traveling shoes.

Within, Coryat records his step-by-step 1,975 mile schlep across Western Europe. He didn't intend for it to be funny, it just turned out that way. Outlandish, toilsome and wacky adventures are related with such sober and solemn seriousness that the clod is completely unaware that he is a clown in his own touring circus.

"There probably has never been another such combination of learning and unconscious buffoonery as is here set forth. Coryate was a serious and pedantic traveller who (as he states in his title) in five months toilsome travel wandered, mostly on foot, over a large part (by his own reckoning 1,975 miles) of western Europe. His adventures probably appeared to his contemporaries as more ridiculous than exciting, but at this remove, his chronicle by its very earnestness provides an account of the chief cities of early seventeenth century Europe which is at least valuable as it is amusing. It was probably his difficulties with the booksellers which induced Coryate to solicit the extraordinary sheaf of testimonials prefixed to the volume. Possibly he acted upon the notion apparently now current among publishers of social directories that every person listed is a prospective purchaser of the work. At any rate he secured contributions from more than sixty writers at the time. Among his panegyrists appear the names of Jonson, Chapman, Donne, Campion, Harington, Drayton, Davies of Hereford, and others, each contributor vying to mock poor Coryate with solemn ridicule." (Pforzheimer) 

Now, imagine you're Ben Jonson, one of the contributors. You've read the book, and, after re-inserting your eyeballs - which, as if in an animated cartoon, grew to the size of softballs and popped-out of their sockets - you consider what to make of this. As your contribution you write a verse explanation of the engraved frontispiece, decoding its emblematic illustrations. It reads, in part:

Our Author in France rode on Horse without stirrop,
And in Italic bathed himselfe in their syrrop.

His love to horses he sorteth out strange prettilie,
He rides them in France, and lies with them in Italie.

You get the idea. It's an Elizabethan comedy roast but the roastee (known as the British Ulysseys, with accent on Odd-essy), basking in the attention, is deaf to the jokes. It's Mystery Science Theater 3000, the book edition, with eminent readers hurling written wisecracks at the deliriously ridiculous and over-long text while they peruse it from their reading chair, rather than vocally razzing a deliriously ridiculous and over-long movie from their seats in the theater.

Here's an excerpt from John Donne's panegyric to Coryat and his Crudities:

This Booke, greater than all, producest now,
Infinite worke, which doth so farre extend,
That none can study it to any end.
Tis no one thing; it is not fruite, nor roote;
Nor poorly limited with head or foote.
If man be therefore man, because he can
Reason, and laugh, thy booke doth halfe make man.
One halfe being made, thy modesty was such,
That thou on th' other halfe wouldst never touch.
When wilt thou be at full, great Lunatique?

Ouch!

Coryat apparently experienced this - and the other testimonials - as "Oooh, they like me, they really like me!"

I am sory I can speake so little of so flourishing and beautifull a Citie [as Turin]. For during that little time that I was in the citie, I found so great a distemperature in my body, by drinking the sweete wines of Piemont, that caused a grievous inflammation in my face and hands; so that I had but a smal desire to walke much abroad in the streets. Therefore I would advise all English-men that intend to travell into Italy, to mingle their wine with water as soone as they come into the country, for feare of ensuing inconveniences... 

In short, Coryat was drunk during his entire stay in Turin.

Complete copies of Coryat's Crudities are scarce. "Perfect copies with the plates intact are not common...The D.N.B. has repeated the statement that the Chetham copy is the only perfect one known" (Pforzheimer).

A complete copy has, however, recently come into the marketplace.  Offered by Whitmore Rare Books, the asking price is $25,000. Despite its faults it's one of the great travelogues.

"Coryate drew on his experiences in writing Coryats Crudities (1611), which was intended to encourage courtiers and gallants to enrich their minds by continental travel. It contains illustrations, historical data, architectural descriptions, local customs, prices, exchange rates, and food and drink, but is too diffuse and bulky - there are 864 pages in the 1905 edition - to become a vade-mecum. To solicit ‘panegyric verses’ Coryate circulated copies of the title-page depicting his adventures and his portrait, which had been engraved by William Hole and which he considered a good likeness. About sixty contributors include many illustrious authors, not all in verse, some insulting, some pseudonymous" (DNB).

Coryat Meets Margarita Emiliana bella Cortesana di Venetia,

As for Thomas Coryat, the "great Lunatique" died in 1617 and now permanently sleeps with the horses in Italy, which beats sleeping with the fishes in Sicily. It's the difference among character assassination, corporeal execution, and the bestial joy of equine companionship on an arduous journey; bathing in horse-piss in Italy was a bonus, pass the Purell, please - and a barf-bag and incontinence pad, the better to endure Coryat's voyage to France and his feed to hungry fish as written in chapter one's first sentence:

I was imbarked at Dover, about tenne of the clocke in the morning, the fourteenth of May, being Saturday and Whitsun-eve, Anno 1608, and arrived in Calais (which Caesar calleth Ictius portus, a maritime towne of that of part Picardy, which is commonly called le pais reconquis; that is, the recovered Province, inhabited in former times by the ancient Morini) about five of the clocke in the afternoone, after I had varnished the exterior parts of the ship with the excrementall ebullitions of my tumultuous stomach, as desiring to satiate the gormandizing paunches of the hungry Haddocks (according as I have hieroglyphically expressed it in the front of my booke) with that wherewith I had superfluously stuffed my selfe at land, having made my rumbling belly their capacious aumbrie.

It isn't often that an author opens his book with a tableau presenting the painting of a ship with his (or anyone else's) diarrhea. It's a riveting first sentence with repulsive denouement; readers may spew the contents of their now tumultuous stomachs through their northern orafice. Yes, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, a dark and stormy night, with emphasis on the dark storm raging at Coryat's southern orafice. Yet sunny skies and silliness await the intrepid reader. Be not afraid. Read on ye armchair traveller, you have nothing to lose but your sanity to this seventeenth century version of your friend's interminable seminar with soporific slideshow about a recent vacation, no detail too picayune to omit. Coryat, for instance, never fails to tell the exact time of day that something occurred, and, it seems, reports on everything he put in his mouth -

 I did eate fried Frogges this citie [Cremona]

- and everything he encountered, with the possible exception of dust motes. He then concludes his exhausting review of each city with a breezy, unintentionally amusing, "so much for Paris;" "so much for Venice;" "so much for Milan." It's so very much.

Yea, verily and alas, the booke lacketh backgrounde musik by the eminent Elizabethan composer and performer, Boots Randolph, playing that olde English aire, Yaketie Saxe, to highlight its slapsticke gravitie and the inadvertent Keystone Cop qualitie of Coryat's adventures chasing after Europe, and enliven his dreary descriptions.

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Titlepage.

CORYAT, Thomas. [From engraved title]: Coryats Crudities. Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome. London: Printed by W[illiam]. S[tansby]., 1611. First edition.  Quarto in eights (8 1/8 x 6 inches; 206 x 153 mm). [-]2; a8-b8 ([-]1 inserted after a3); b4; c8-g8; h4-l4; B8-D8 (D3 inserted after preceding D); E8-3C8; 3D4; [-]2 (first is signed 3E3; both are errata). Extra engraved titlepage (i.e. frontispiece) by William Hole, five engraved plates (three folding), two text engravings and numerous woodcut initials and head-pieces. With two leaves of errata.

Pforzheimer 218. Cox 98. Keynes 70.

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Images courtesy of Whitmore Rare Books, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.
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The Marquis De Sade Gripes To Mrs. Marquis De Sade & His Kids

by Stephen J. Gertz

Oh Sade, poor Sade, mamma's hung you in the closet
and I'm feeling so sad.*

A revealing eleven-page signed autograph letter written by the Marquis de Sade to his ex-wife and children is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants Livres, Livres Anciens, Livres d'Artistes & Manuscrits sale November 6, 2013. Autograph manuscript and letter material by Sade is extremely scarce and this letter, with its original envelope, is estimated to sell for €30,000 - 50,000 ($41,000 - $67,000; £27,000 - £45,000).

Dated October 1, 1806 and composed while he was confined in the asylum at Charenton, Sade provides details of his fortune prior to the Revolution, upon his release from the Bastille in 1789, and in the seventeen years since. He based his calculations of the period 1790-1806 from discussions with Constance Marie- Quesnet, his mistress since 1790 and the one who took care of his post-Bastille business affairs.

He accuses his ex-wife and children of embezzlement; they had accused Mlle Quesnet of same.

"A friendly and confidential agreement held between us last Friday at Mrs. Quesnet [ ... ] resulted in little recall. [4 following lines crossed out]. I hope it makes you feel that the truth must always produce a honest soul, and embrace you, Sade." Sade is especially concerned about the state of his properties; their value seems to have decreased.

"The said picture painted for the purpose of proving that it was not degraded during the sixteen years that Ms. Quesnet has been with me since I was called out of the Bastille, until the present time, and therefore, Madame de Sade was wrong when she said, 'I find it less real now than I found it then.'"

Following calculations on his rental income and certain properties -  "Location good Arles, Coste, Mazan, Saumane, and it was on that pay family debts, charges, fees, Corporate &c . &c" - he notes that yes, his business has been mismanaged but defends Ms. Quesnet. "The charge of embezzlement under Ms. Quesnet is calumnous and unfounded."

He explains that all losses are rather due to mismanagement by the "notary Momaï." 

Sade then ratchets up his chagrin. "What happened to 27,000 [francs]? What has become of them ? O you who would like to make this issue [ ... ] dare say, are you not ashamed? Know that your father was on a list [?] by an evil family." The 'list" in question was a lettre de cachet that his mother-in-law had issued against him.

Disappointed by the behavior of his family against him, he finished the recollection:

"[?] They are all well vexers I believe that the public was instructed [ ... ] he will yet one day [ ... ] but not [ ... ] the horrible vice that we can not exist or compel the soul of the one who gave life to my children or in the souls of those who received it. Sade."

This letter appears to be fresh in the marketplace, purchased by the present owner from a Sade descendant, hence the steep estimate which may very well be exceeded.

 Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis of Sade (1740-1814), spent thirty-two years of his life incarcerated for one reason or another - mistreating prostitutes, blasphemy, etc. In 1768, he was imprisoned for holding a woman against her will and sexually abusing her; his mother-in-law had turned him in to the authorities who issued an infamous lettre de cachet which sealed his fate for many years to come. In 1772, he was sentenced to death for the non-lethal poisoning of prostitutes and sodomy with his manservant. He fled to Italy with his wife's sister and the manservant. He was caught, however, and imprisoned but escaped and took it on the lam four months later.

He hid out in his chateau Lacoste, rejoining his wife, who became his accomplice in further sexual crimes. More sexual mistreatment of servants ensued and he was forced once again to flee to Italy, returning to France in 1776 and more of the same. Arrested again in 1778, he successfully appealed his death sentence but remained in jail under the lettre de cachet that his mother-in-law had sworn out on him ten years earlier. In 1784 he was transferred to the Bastille. On July 4, 1789 he was  transferred to the asylum at Charenton. His wife divorced him.

In 1801, Napoleon ordered the arrest of the anonymous author of Justine and Juliette, Sade's novels of virtue punished and vice rewarded. He was arrested and imprisoned without trial, first at the prison of Sainte-Pélagie and then, following allegations that he had tried to seduce young fellow prisoners there, in the fortress of Bicêtre. After intervention by his family, he was declared insane in 1803 and transferred once more to the asylum at Charenton. His ex-wife and children had agreed to pay his expenses. They were, evidently, siphoning off income from his estate, which by 1796 had already sunk into distress.

It's difficult to feel any sympathy for Sade yet in this letter we hear a broken sixty-six year old man at the end of his rope if not his life, and empathy is warranted if only enough to occupy the point of a needle; it was a rope he hung himself with. His wife and children may not have been the best that a husband and father could hope for but his wife and children had a husband and father you wouldn't wish on a dog.

Life With Father it wasn't.

If only reality television shows had existed at the time: reruns of To Hell With The Sades would still be in syndication today.

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*Apologies to Arthur Kopit.

Awkward translation of letter excerpts by the author.
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Image courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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A Grand Rip-Off Of Grandville's Metamophoses Du Jour

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1828-29, J.J. Grandville, (1803-1847), one of the most celebrated caricaturists of his era, published Les Metamorphoses du jour, a satire of the French bourgeoisie in which he depicted humans whose character was revealed by possessing the heads of beasts, with satiric captions to each lithographed plate. Extremely popular in its initial issue, it is amongst the rarest of all color-plate books.

It was so popular that within a very short time afterward two imitation editions were released by competing publishers in 1828, both designed by the same anonymous artist, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey. One of them, La Métempsycose réalisée (The Mental Metamorphoses Realized), recently passed through my hands.

La Métempsycose réalisée, containing twenty hand-colored lithographed plates, is even rarer than Les Metamorphoses du jour. Exceptionally scarce, with no copies recorded by OCLC/KVK in institutional holdings worldwide  and none at auction, according to ABPC, since at least 1928, it appears that most copies were broken up at an early date to individually sell the lithographs. Generally unknown and scarcely seen, these plates make their Internet (and likely everywhere else) debut on Booktryst.

Garnerey's second album of Grandville imitations is the equally scarce La Petite ménagerie (Paris, Piaget, s.d. [1828-1829]). Grandville bitterly complained about both the albums; they were so obviously and blatantly copycats of his work, down to Garnerey signing only his initial, "G," to some of the plates, which only added to the confusion and what was surely an effort by the publishers (Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant) meant to deceive the public.

"Les Métamorphoses du jour ont, des leur apparition, provoqué de la part d'autres artistes des imitations, dont Grandville ne manqua pas de se plaindre. V. la planche 33 du recueil de 1829 qui porte cette légende: Il est assez de geais à  deux pieds comme lui... Grandville y fait allusion aux deux albums que publiait, ds 1828, Hippolyte Garnerey et qui sont les suivants: 1 La Metamorphoses réalisée, 20 planches lthographiées; les unes signées G..., la plupart non signées; les 10 premières planches portent l'adresse sivante: A Bruxelles chez Daems et à Oaris chez Meant fils, rue St-Antoine, no. 9. les pl. 11 à 20: A Paris,  chez Genty, éditeur, rue St-Jacques, no. 22 [1828-1829]" (Vicaire).

Little is known about Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste Garnerey (1787-1858) beyond that he was a French watercolor painter, engraver, and lithographer who debuted at the Salon in 1831. 

Grandville established the anthropomorphic human menagerie genre of caricature; Garnerey reinforced it.  In 1851, artist Amédée Varin (1818-1883) further explored the genre with L'Empire des Légumes aka Drôleries végétales; people as vegetables. The following year Varin illustrated Les Papillons Métamorphoses Terrestres des Peuples de l'Air; people as butterflies. These were not, however,  satires; Varin was a fantasist. 

Of Grandville's Les Metamorphoses du jour, Gordon N. Ray, whose The Art of the Illustrated Book In France 1700-1914 is the key reference, wrote, "This famous album, which established Grandville's early stye of bitter burlesque, has become rare. Indeed, it is known to many of his admirers only through the greatly inferior album of seventy wood-engraved reproductions published by Harvard in 1854… Lust, gluttony, anger, and the other deadly sins are stigmatized, now with the blow of a hammer, now with the thrust of a stiletto; while the foibles and humors of mankind also receive due attention. Throughout the series Grandville's choice of beast-heads is inspired; and the force of his conceptions and the wit of his captions rarely falter. Occasionally, he produces a design of universal application that calls Goya to mind, as in the bat and owl creatures bewildered by the sunshine of 'The light that hurts them' (no. 12). Perhaps his most terrifying plate is 'Ménagerie (no. 67), which shows four prison cells. In the first are complacent commercial offenders, enjoying all the comforts of home; in the second violent criminals, sly or stupid; in the third murderers, one with a countenance of the utmost ferocity; in the forth, political prisoners, quiet and despondent…Granville turned to direct political satire in his final plates, but the publication of his onslaughts on church ('Famille des scarabées' no. 72) and state ('Une bête féroce,' no. 73) was not permitted in France" (Ray).

The difference in artistic execution between Grandville and Garnerey is slim; Garnerey was a master imitator. What distinguishes the two are the captions. Grandville was sharp and had bite; Garnerey, while not completely dull, could have used a whet-stone to hone his captions to a finer edge. Yet his captions possess a pleasant charm and the Bibliothéque National possesses a copy of Grandville bound with the two Garnereys; companion pieces in counterpoint,

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[GARNEREY, Hippolyte Jean-Baptiste]. La Métempsycose réalisée. Brussels: Chez Daems / Paris: Chez Méant, 1828.

First edition. Oblong folio (9 7/8 x 13 7/8 ini; 250 x 352 mm). Twenty hand-colored stub-mounted lithographed plates in the style of Granville's Les Métamorphoses du jour. Lithography by Gobert et Cie. 

Vicaire V, col. 788.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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The Devil Made Le Poitevin Do It

by Stephen J. Gertz

Impish devils dance, make merry, carry off young maidens, engage in scatological activities, make mischief, toy with men and women. and generally have a hell of a time as infernal rascals frolicking with diabolical glee in Les Diables de Lithographies by Eugène Modeste Edmond Le Poitevin. 

Published in Paris, 1832, it is the most famous of all works, paint or print, by Le Poitevin (1806-1870), a French painter and lithographer. His "Devilries" established a genre in the wake of the Romantic school's Mephistopheles and Faust, from scenes to fright to scenes that, as here, delight and amuse, Satan a giant buff horned paysan overflowing with specimens for his torment-zoo.

The album, co-published in Paris by chez Aumont and in London by Charles Tilt, contains eighty illustrations on twelve black and white numbered lithographed plates, with two supplemental plates (Petits sujets des diableries manquent le plus souvent, nos. 19 and 26: Paris / London: chez Aubert / Charles Tilt, 1832) containing thirty-five illustrations; a total of fourteen plates with 115 illustrations.

In 1832 France was in turmoil. The idealism of republicans, which peaked during the July Revolution of 1830 when Charles X abdicated and Louis Philippe ascended to the new constitutional monarchy, had been shattered. Subsequent events led them to believe that the blood spilled in 1830 had been for naught. Food shortages and an outbreak of cholera that claimed over 18,000 lives in Paris alone added to the general discontent. Bonapartists bitterly lamented the loss of empire. Supporters of the former Bourbon dynasty were angry that Louis Philippe wasn't a Bourbon. The rich and the poor, who felt victimized by Louis Philippe, had their disillusionment expressed by Parisian republicans, including students, who took to the streets on June 5th and 6th in armed insurrection. The June Rebellion was crushed. 

Diabolical forces at work?

Upon its publication, Les Diables de Lithographies was hugely popular, a sensational success that became en vogue, so much so that demand for further "devilries" became enormous. Le Poitevin quickly  followed with Les diableries érotiques; Petits sujets des diableries; Bizarreries diaboliques; and Encore des Diableries. A. de Bayalos's Diablotins and Michel Delaporte's Récréations diabolico-fantasmagoriques continued in the genre that Le Poitevin established. Diables were all over the place, the zombie apocalypse of contemporary Parisian culture but a lot more fun for the protagonists, many of whom pass wind, water, or what's left of yesterday's lunch for sport.

It will come as no surprise that Les Diables de Lithographies is scarcely found complete, scarcer still in the publisher's original wrappers. The album was routinely broken up and the prints individually sold. OCLC records only one complete copy in institutional holdings worldwide. According to the ABPC Index, the last complete copy to come to auction was in 1923.

Plate 12.

As a painter, Le Poitevin specialized in marine art, as a lithographer he is best-known outside of France for his Devilries. He was a contributor to The Journal of Painters and Charles Philpon's La Caricature. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a pupil of Louis Hersent and Xavier Leprince.  Very popular in his time, he exhibited at the Salon from 1831 until his death in 1870.

Le Poitevin's mark.

"Tout autre est Eugène Le Poitevin, le peintre de marines, qui popularise un genre bien différent mais dont le retentissement ne fut pas moins grand. Procédant en droite ligne du Méphistophélès de Faust et des tendances au bizarre de l’école romantique, les diableries de cet artiste vinrent jeter une note pittoresque et amusante au milieu des estampes sans couleur du consciencieux lithographe. Pendant un temps ce ne furent plus que diables et diableries, diables souvent érotiques, diableries plus ou moins légères. Les Diables, Petits sujets de diables, Bizarreries diaboliques, Encore des Diableries; c’est sous ces titres que se répandaient partout les albums à couverture brune de Le Poitevin qu’imitèrent bientôt de Bayalos avec ses Diablotins et Michel Delaporte avec ses Récréations diabolico-fantasmagoriques. Diables blancs et diables noirs suivis de diables rouges et de diables verts. Le diable se glissait partout, commettant mille incongruités, relevait les robes des femmes, les déshabillait comme par enchantement, les mettait en cage, les tirait par les cheveux, ayant toujours à son service un nombre incalculable de petits diablotins courant à tort et à travers les feuilles. Il y eut une telle invasion des sujets de messire Satan que ce ne fut plus, comme dans la chanson, « Vive la lithographie, » mais « au diable, les polissonnes" (Grand-Carteret, Les Moeurs et la caricature en France, p. 174).

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LE POITEVIN, [Eugène Modeste Edmond]. Les Diables de Lithographies. Paris / London: Chez Aumont / Charles Tilt, n.d. [1832].

First edition, complete. Oblong folio (14 3/8 x 21 3/4 in; 363 x 600 mm). Eighty illustrations on twelve black and white lithographed plates, numbered, with two supplemental plates (Petits sujets des diableries manquent le plus souvent, nos. 19 and 26: Paris / London: Aubert / Tilt, 1832) with thirty-five illustrations; a total of fourteen. 

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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Seven More Stunning Modernist Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

More from Swann Galleries' Modernist Posters sale, held yesterday.

James Harley Minter designed this poster, Bal Pa'Pillon, in 1931 for The Kokoon Club of Cleveland, Ohio, founded in 1911 by Carl Moellman and William Sommer, young American artists inspired by the Dadaist movement and similar avant-garde organizations in Europe, and modeled after New York's Kit Kat Club. The club held annual costume balls, which began in 1913 and continued through 1938.

"This decadent, cubist-influenced image is an electric, microcosmic view of Cleveland's avant-garde artistic community. Presaging the psychedelic posters of the 1960s and reflecting many of the concurrent graphic art trends in Europe, this poster, and the entire series for the club's yearly balls, are bright, bold, daring and stand out as exciting and innovative examples of American design. Each poster also served as an invitation to the event, with the invitee's name written in across the bottom" (Nicholas D. Lowry). I hope Margaret Brennan had as much fun at this soirée as I did viewing its poster.

I am pleased to report that the head-snapping whiplash I experienced after learning that Cleveland possessed an avant-garde artistic community has been successfully treated via review of gangbuster Elliot Ness's checkered career as Cleveland's Public Safety Director followed by an unsuccessful run for mayor of Cleveland in 1938. I have no snobbish animus toward Cleveland; I simply had no idea that the city possessed a hip culture. 

For more about The Kokoon Club of Cleveland, including a survey of other gorgeous posters for its costume balls go here.

For Viaggiate Di Notte (1930), designed by famed graphic artist Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (1901-1968) for Wagons Lits (a railroad sleeping car company),  the artist chose an "unquestionably persuasive" (Mouron p. 69) symbolic and poetic approach to advertising.

"The breathtakingly simple device of a red light glowing in the foggy darkness of a railroad siding is perfectly consistent with our poetically charged experience of looking out the window of a speeding night express" (op cit, Mouron).

"It is an elegant and inviting approach, evoking travel by night. The poster exists with different text variants, but this one is the least cluttered. This is also the rare Italian version. We could locate only one other copy in the collection of the Suntory Museum in Japan" (Lowry).

Cassandre, again. Turmac / La Cigarette is one of his earliest posters, designed in 1925. "It predates the time when his work began to reflect his radical and ingenious design theories. He employs a sensuous approach which doesn't appear again in his work until 1937, when a similar smoldering cigarette is featured in his poster for Sensation Cigarettes. Nevertheless, it also foreshadows some of his subsequent graphic finesse: within the stylized smoke and the outside border, he plays with the interchange between shades of blue, white and black in a manner that presages his typographic work in later posters such as Pivolo, Nord Express and Étoile du Nord. The actual typography on this poster is an exceptional mix of Art Deco and the Arabesque. We have not found another copy at auction for the past 30 years" (Lowry). 

Jac Leonard (1904-1980), a Canadian artist, created Beware The Walls Have Ears c. 1940, It's one in a series of posters printed by Canada's Wartime Information Board, similar in aim and approach to those published by the American War Office in its Careless Talk Kills series issued during World War II.

A swastika-eyed secret villain, photo-montage, bold, bright typography and powerful imagery - this progressive design has it all and makes its point as firmly as a hammer to the noggin.

Edgar Scauflaire (1893-1960) was a Belgian artist who studied at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Liége, where he was born. Many of his paintings clearly reflect the influence of Picasso and Braque. He also designed murals and tapestries. This Art Deco-inspired, aquatic allegory is one of at least two posters used to promote the International Exposition de L'Eau of 1939.

After studying art at the Munich Academy under Julius Diez and Angelo Jank, Hermann Keimel (1889-1948) went on to become a teacher at the same institution. He was a member of the artistic group "The Twelve," and also of the new Munich Association of Poster Artists. He designed numerous commercial posters, generally employing a crisp Art Deco style. Muenchner / Plakat Kunst (1931) is his masterpiece and remains an icon of poster self-promotion: to promote an exhibition of Munich poster art Keimel constructed this cubist face out of colored sheets of printing paper.

Manilo Parrini (1901-1968) created this striking aeronautical-themed poster for the 3d International Aircraft Exhibition held in conjunction with the Milan Trade Fair of 1939.

He worked during Mussolini's regime in Italy, which is to say in a monumental, over the top, grandiose glory of Rome epic style, light on subtlety; the anvil school of messaging. Here, in a Fascist salute to Il Duce, he incorporates a trio of fasces on the tail fin of the plane in the foreground, while the three planes in the distance are streaming the colors of the Italian flag behind them.

In case anyone misses the symbolism of fasces on the tail, it's a visual representation of baciarmi il  Fascista culo,  if not an official, explicit political slogan, a casually implicit one.

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Réne Magritte designed posters and sheet music? Stop by Booktryst tomorrow for the story.

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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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Splendid Beauty Reads Book En Plein Air (1895)

by Stephen J. Gertz

A nude woman, languid upon a sheet in a pastoral setting, with a gown loosely draped across her lower body, is deeply engrossed in a book.

The book she's reading is, presumably, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, specifically the Edition de Deux Mondes published in Paris, 1895 by the Société des Beaux Arts and illustrated by Raphael Collin. 

In the movie version, the camera would track over the woman's shoulder and move into the book, whereupon the text would dissolve into scene one. Here, she is actually in the book, a comely prelude to the text, in three states of dishabille ala book, color, sepia, and red tint.

Then we meet Chloe...

...And Daphnis and Chloe.

They are bound together in love and leather within a sumptuous azure crushed morocco binding lavishly gilt and inlaid in an Art Nouveau design, the covers with a large central fleur-de-lys in gilt and maroon morocco within an elaborate frame of lily bouquets and garlands inlaid in maroon, orange, and white. 

The spine is gilt in compartments, the smaller ones at head and tail with an inlaid maroon fleur-de-lys, with a large central compartment containing a spray of lilies in maroon and white, and two compartments with gilt titling.  The inner boards feature broad gilt dentelles with elaborate floral and foliate decoration.

 

Burnt orange morocco doublures grace the inner covers, the front doublure featuring an oval inset of white kidskin  with a hand-colored engraving of a female figure. The endpapers are of ivory moiré silk.

ABPC notes that only one copy of this very strictly limited edition of Daphnis and Chloe, translated into English from the 1559 French translation (Les amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloe) of the original Greek by Jacques Amyot, tutor to the sons of Henry II and Bishop of Auxerre, and identically bound, has come to auction since 1975.

A luxury volume attractively printed on Japanese vellum with boldly wide margins, it is gorgeously illustrated with a series of engravings that were considered to be some of the most attractive of the period. In a list published in 1895 and cited by Gordon N.. Ray in The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914, the Collin-illustrated Daphnis and Chloe, first issued in 1890, came in fourth in a survey to determine the ten best modern French illustrated books. 

The edition under notice appears to have been produced a few years later, as part of a series of  deluxe volumes of literary works illustrated by some of the best contemporary artists, and issued by the Sociétié de Beaux Arts in a Salon Édition of 500 copies, an Édition Artistique of 75 copies, and, as here, an Édition de Deux Mondes of 20 copies. The identical  binding design was used for the Sociétié's 1895 twenty-copy Édition de Deux Mondes of Flaubert's A Simple Heart.

Louis-Joseph-Raphael Collin aka Raphael Collin (1850 -1916) was a French painter and illustrator associated the symbolist movement. He studied at the School of St. Louis, then at Verdun, where he was a classmate of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who grew to become a close friend. Collin later went to Paris where he became a student of William Bouguereau, then joined his friend Bastien-Lepage in Cabanel. Collin was a genre painter of nudes, portraits, decorative compositions, and a book illustrator. He exhibited at the Salon beginning in 1873 and won several awards.

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LONGUS. Daphnis and Chloe. With Illustrations by Raphael Collin. Preface by Jules Claretie. Paris: Société des Beaux Arts, 1895.

Edition de Deux Mondes, limited to twenty copies only, this copy indicated with a star. Quarto (10 5/8 x 7 7/8 in; 270 x 200 mm). xvi, 166 pp. Printed on velin. With eleven in-text illustrations in three states (full color, black and white, and single color) and twelve plates in two states, one color and one black and white, all with tissue guards.

Cf. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914, p. 377.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Kids Give Dog A Colonic, And Other Childhood Amusements In 1824

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Remedy. (Aubry).

Kids Do The Darnedest Things:

It's France's Funniest Home Videos, nineteenth century edition, capturing, in hand-colored stills, those precious cinema verité moments when kids will be kids and memories are forever imprinted on the heart.

Particularly on the heart of a dog being given an involuntary clyster in der keister with a syringe that could pass for a cruise missile.

It's one of six lithographs in Jeux de l'enfance [Childhood Games] by Charles Aubry, a color-plate album printed and published in Paris by François Seraphin Delpech (1778-1825), the great, early French lithographer, in 1824.

The Little Smoker. (Aubry).

Poor children. With Le Gulp Grande banned in Paris by an ancestor of New York's Mayor Bloomberg concerned with 19th century childhood obesity, opportunities to mimic dangerous adult behavior have dwindled, leaving smoking as one of the last bad adult habits for kids to engage in. The leader is a cool little hipster drummer boy; leave it to a musician to corrupt those around him. We do not see, however, the rib-tickling denouement to this scene, when Junior on the left and the girl at right get sick and toss their cookies.

The Paper-Curlers. (Aubry).

After enduring a colon-cleansing and now, presumably, purified of toxins, it's time for Fido's trip to the beauty salon. He doesn't look any happier than when he was fundamentally invaded, and we get a hint of how this tableau will play out as little Jane employs the curling iron and curling papers, a friend rapturously looking on while Fido nears feral, gives the little boy a look to kill and the kid understands to his horror that his nose will soon be Alpo.

The Pioneer's Beard. (Aubry).

Boo! Imitating ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons or Rasputin the Mad Monk is always a sure-fire laff-riot. The girl in the middle is cooly faux-frightened but the bejesus is clearly scared out of her companion at left. It's not, in and of itself, material for France's Funniest Home Videos but it has something extra that levitates above the banal: the poor dog at lower right appears to be suffering from them way down home, 'gainst my will, high-colonic blues.

The Flick. (Aubry).

Revenge of the Girls! While Dennis Le Menace sleeps, his sisters torment him, the youngest gently flicking his cheek to annoy without actually rousing him. Moments later, however, he awakes with a start and bladder accident. That's entertainment!

The Little Actors. (Aubry).

There's an interesting political subtext to the above plate with young boy being dressed-up as the king with pillow to allow for the monarch's girth: Jeux de l'enfance was published in 1824 and on September 16 of that year, Louis XVIII, the rotund progressive who reigned in post-Napoleon, Bourbon Restoration France, died, and Charles X, a hard-core reactionary, assumed the throne. He was not well-liked and in short order had censorship laws passed amongst other regressive and unpopular legislation; he was forced to abdicate in the July (Second) Revolution of 1830. Jeux de l'enfance by Aubry first appears in the Bibliographie de la France in its January 8, 1825 issue, as no. 41 in the Gravures section. The children are celebrating a popular and recently deceased king at the expense of the new king, Charles X. Aubry was playing with fire; such sentiments would soon become dangerous to publicly express.

Artist Charles Aubry made his reputation with hunting scenes and military  subjects. In  1822  he  accepted  the post of  professor of  art at l'Ecole Militaire de  Saumur.  That's about all that's readily available about the man. Note that he taught art in a military academy, an unlikely salon. But this is France and what's wrong with art appreciation for warriors? It's dash and élan du soldat, my friends, dash and élan. With paintbrush.

Grandmother's Bonnet. (Boilly).

This particular copy of Jeux de l'enfance is part of a collection album that includes prints by J.F. Scheffert, and two lithographs by Louis Leopold Boilly, the Boilly prints likely added to the album because they cover the same territory as Jeux..., albeit the scenes less aggressive than Aubry's views, Boilly's placid dog spared the humiliating depredations of Aubry's prepubescent juvenile delinquents gleefully engaged in mischievous play.

Grandfather's Wig. (Boilly).

Boilly's children, in contrast, enjoy completely innocent activity, scenes so charming that they will not be finalists in this week's episode of France's Funniest Home Videos. They lack that certain something, that je ne sais cruel slapstick that inspires peals of laughter rather than pleasant smiles that warm the heart but cool the ratings. In the above tableau, for instance, unless the bewigged little girl subsequently slips on a banana peel, does a header into the air, lands on Grandfather's top hat, then smites her brother with Grandfather's cane, where's the side-splitting guffaw?

On its own, Jeux de l'enfance is an insanely scarce book with only one copy in institutional holdings worldwide, at the Morgan Library. The Bibliothéque National has a set of the prints bound within a collection album.

I am aware of another album containing Jeux de l'enfance bound with the two Boilly lithographs, it, as well as the Aubry-Scheffer-Boilly album under notice, in a contemporary binding likely issued by Delpech to move unsold prints, a tactic routinely and successfully employed by Delpech's successor, Chez Aubert, the esteemed Parisian printing and publishing house owned by caricaturist, journalist and famed publisher of political and social satire (with a stable of artists that constitute the golden age of French caricature), Charles Philipon,  and operated under the nominal stewardship of his brother-in-law, Gabriel Aubert, and his wife, Philipon's sister, Marie-Françoise, the management brain, it appears, in the business.

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AUBRY, Charles and BOILLY, Louis Leopold. Jeux de l'enfance. Paris: Delpech, 1824. First (only) edition. Folio. Eight hand-colored lithographs, six in series by Aubry, two out of series by Boilly.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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