- Lot 13

Lot 13
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Estimation :
6000 - 8000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 6 318EUR
- Lot 13
IMAGE L'. L'Image. Artistic and literary review decorated with figures on wood appearing every month (Paris, Floury, December 1896-December 1897). Specimen and 12 issues with the covers preserved, bound in a strong volume in-4 (33,8 x 26,8 cm) : blond calf, large mosaic decoration of leather pieces of various colors worked in cold or pyrographed, representing a woman draped in white in a landscape; second plate decorated in the center of a floral pattern mosaic of blue-gray, yellow and brown morocco; smooth spine decorated with a mosaic reminiscent of that of the upper plate; multiple gilt fillets framing the interior ; lining and endpapers of Art Nouveau paper decorated with plant-inspired motifs in a cameo of ochre (René Wiener after Georges de Feure); original box in calf, spine ribbed (a few rare and pale freckles; some light wear to the headpieces and hinges, box worn, a few small stains without gravity, accident to a hunt with missing leather); modern cloth box. Rare complete collection on China paper of this beautiful illustrated journal, in an amazing symbolist binding. Complete collection of this important monthly magazine of modern art founded by the French corporation of wood engravers and published under the literary direction of Roger Marx and Jules Rais, and under the artistic direction of Tony Beltrand, Auguste Lepère and Léon Ruffe. L'Image proposed "to group, without bias of school, in the same research of art, the writers, the draftsmen, the engravers, and to reach the absolute unity of the illustration and the text, by offering only original and unpublished". The great names of the time collaborated in this review: Maurice Barrès, Lucien Descaves, Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Pierre Louÿs, Jules Renard, Roger Marx, etc, for the texts; the covers were designed by Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Victor Prouvé, Bellery-Desfontaines, Verneuil, etc. For the illustrations, with numerous woodcuts out of the text and in the text, the names of George Auriol, Mucha, Maurice Denis, Daniel Vierge, Tony Beltrand, Jules Chéret, Lucien Pissarro, Helleu, Vallotton, Victor Prouvé, Auguste Lepère, Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin, Degas, Luc-Olivier Merson, Carlos Schwabe, Eugène Carrière, Eugène Grasset, Steinlen, Léon Lhermitte, and so on, are listed. "Each page of L'Image is like an indefinitely variable decor, which comments the lines with the forms. As a peristyle, an original frame, most often, a first page, prose or poem, framed by a vegetal or figurative theme" (Raymond Bouyer, Art et décoration, January-June 1898, p. 28). Complete collection consisting of the 12 issues, as well as the rare specimen issue, in a deluxe edition of 100 copies on China paper containing a separate edition on China paper of all the engravings and the smokes of all the plates before the letter. One of 12 copies on China of the specimen number. Magnificent symbolist binding 1900 signed by René WIENER (his name pushed in gold on the verso of the first endpaper and with his monogram pushed in cold in the lower corner of the second plate) after a cardboard by Georges de FEURE. An important figure of the Nancy School, René WIENER (1855-1939) was, with Camille Martin and Victor Prouvé, one of the renovators of the art of bookbinding. In 1893, they exhibited eight bindings at the Salon des Arts décoratifs du Champ de Mars. From 1897, Wiener worked with Georges de FEURE; together they made two bindings, one of which for Octave Uzanne's L'Art dans la décoration extérieure des livres (preserved in the Musée de l'École de Nancy) shows similarities with the binding of L'Image. "The cover is treated in the manner of his pseudo-medieval illustrations. It depicts a forest scene in which a woman, dressed in a cloak, opens a door that leads to another landscape. The back cover is decorated with a flower similar to that of the culs-de-lampe" (Ian Millman, Georges de Feure, maître du symbolisme et de l'Art nouveau, ACR édition, 1992, p. 141-142). Provenance: Jules RAIS, literary director of L'Image (handwritten mention in pencil repeated several times in the lower margin of the hors-texte "Exemplaire de Mr Rais. Beltrand"); Michel WITTOCK (Christie's sale, May 11, 2001, n° 7)
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