Louis Rhead – { feuilleton }

Les Maîtres de l’Affiche

Alphonse Mucha.

Les Maîtres de l’Affiche was a multi-volume guide to the state of poster art in the 1890s, published in five volumes from 1896 to 1900. Being a French publication, the contents are mostly by French artists but other nations are represented—Britain, Germany, Italy, the United States—although fewer contributions than you might expect given the quantity of pages to be filled. The chief attraction of these books is the attention they give to each design, all of which are printed in colour on a full page, and the time of publication which coincides with the birth of Art Nouveau. In addition to the great Alphonse Mucha there are designs by Eugène Grasset, Henri Privat-Livemont, Georges de Feure, Will Bradley, Louis Rhead and others. There’s also a lot of cabaret stuff from Montmartre which has never been to my taste (although I like the Steinlen posters) but those designs were the typical ones of the period.

Henri Privat-Livemont.

The first four volumes in this set may be found at Gallica (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4) but not the fifth volume—isn’t a national library supposed to be more thorough than this?—which may be seen at NYPL. For those who prefer paper reproductions, there’s a reprint in Dover Publications’ Pictorial Archive series, The Complete “Masters of the Poster”: All 256 Colour Plates from “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche”.

Louis Rhead.

Will Bradley.

Joseph Sattler.

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Exlibris (Bucheignerzeichen)

I don’t use bookplates, and don’t know anyone who does, but the conjunction between art and literature is a fascinating one. Exlibris (Bucheignerzeichen) (1909) by Walter von Zur Westen explores the history of the bookplate, and would no doubt answer some of my questions about the form if it wasn’t in German throughout, and also typeset in the semi-legible Fraktur style that used to be de rigueur for all German texts.

We still have the illustrations, however, and these range from woodcut engravings to contemporary works in pencil and ink, with many of the later contributions being from established artists whose names are familiar today; among the examples below are works by Symbolists Max Klinger, Fernand Khnopff and Felicien Rops. There’s also an especially fine example by Charles Ricketts. The latter are a reminder that bookplate commissions were a common thing for 19th-century artists, although their efforts are seldom seen outside collections such as this. Much of Zur Westen’s history is devoted to the German regions but later chapters cover other European countries and the United States.

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Berlin bookplates

Not all the bookplates here are German, the selection includes examples from Franz von Bayros and Walter Crane. The plates are from the 1907 proceedings of the Ex Libris Association of Berlin. I’d not seen anything by Mathilde Ade before but a quick search reveals her to have been a prolific bookplate illustrator. There’s more of her work here (and that blog is also worth a browse).

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Library of Congress bookplates

Artist: Phil May (1895).

The bookplates housed at the Library of Congress aren’t all available for online viewing which is a shame when their collection includes notable examples such as these. Three of the plates here were designed by the artists whose books they identified; two of the others are for writers—Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack London—while the sixth one is for Charlie Chaplin. The artists’ plates look like continuations of the work of their creators which makes them less interesting than those of the writers and actor, all three of which say something about the way these men saw themselves reflected in their work: the pantheon of characters from Burroughs’ fiction; Chaplin’s poor boy conquering London; and Jack London’s lone wolf daring you to try to steal his book.

Artist: Frederic Remington (between 1880? and 1909).

Artist: Studley Burroughs (between 1914 and 1922).

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Erotic bookplates

Art by and for the library of Aangel Mendez (1950).

Only the first example here is overtly erotic but the one below is tagged as such on this site which displays a huge variety of bookplate designs. There’s more to be found in the Ex Eroticis Libris, Erotica, and Nude sections. Pretty much everything there is heterosexual, of course; homoerotic bookplates from the earlier decades of the 20th century are scarce for obvious reasons but naked males, equivocal or not, can always be found. (Via Things Magazine.)

Art by Heino Beddig (1966).

Art by and for the library of Haagen Bartam-Jensen (no date).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Koloman Moser bookplates
• Erotic bookplates by Franz von Bayros
• German bookplates
• Troutsdale Press bookplates
• Bookplates from The Studio
• Yuri Yakovenko bookplates
• Tranquillo Marangoni bookplates
• Book-plates of To-day
• Louis Rhead bookplates
• Pratt Libraries Ex Libris Collection
• The Evil Orchid Bookplate Contest
• The art of Oleg Denysenko
• David Becket’s bookplates