IMAGE L'. - Lot 114

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Lot n° 114
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Estimation :
15000 - 20000 EUR
IMAGE L'. - Lot 114
IMAGE L'. L'Image. Artistic and literary magazine decorated with figures on wood appearing every month (Paris, Floury, December 1896-December 1897). Specimen and 12 issues with covers preserved, bound in a large volume in-4 (33,8 x 26,8 cm): blond calf, broad mosaic decoration of various coloured leather pieces worked in cold or pyrographed, representing a woman draped in white in a landscape; second board decorated in the centre with a mosaic floral pattern in blue-grey, yellow and brown morocco; smooth spine decorated with a mosaic pattern reminiscent of the one on the upper board; multiple gilt fillets framing the interior; lining and endpapers of Art Nouveau paper decorated with vegetal 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 slight wear to the headpieces and hinges, box worn, a few small stains without gravity, accident to a hunt with lack of leather); modern cloth box. Rare complete collection on China paper of this beautiful illustrated journal, in an astonishing symbolist binding. Complete collection of this important monthly journal 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 aimed to "group together, without any school bias, in the same artistic research, writers, draughtsmen, engravers, and to achieve absolute unity of illustration and text, by offering only the original and the unpublished".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 outside 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, etc., were included. "Each page of L'Image is like an indefinitely variable decor, which comments on the lines with the forms. As a peristyle, an original frame, most often a first page, prose or poem, framed by a plant 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 Ghine containing a separate edition on Chine of all the engravings and the smoke of all the plates before the letter. One of 12 copies on China of the specimen number. Beautiful symbolist binding signed by René WIENER (his name stamped in gold on the verso of the first endpaper and with his monogram stamped in cold on 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 L'Art dans la décoration extérieure des livres by Octave Uzanne (preserved in the Musée de l'École de Nancy) shows similarities with the binding of L'Image. "The cover plate 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 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 edition, 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, 11 May 2001, n° 7).
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