Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts - was the term under which two groups of French artists united, the first for some exhibitions in the early 1860s, the second since 1890 for annual exhibitions. Established in 1862 by the painter and gallery owner Louis Martinet and the writer Théophile Gautier, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was first chaired by Gautier, with the painter Aimé Millet as deputy chairman. The committee was composed of the painters Eugène Delacroix, Carrier-Belleuse, and Puvis de Chavannes, and among the exhibitors were Léon Bonnat, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Charles-François Daubigny, Gustave Doré, and Édouard Manet. The organization morphed into various others over the years, and the two books featured in this musing were published by Société des Beaux-Arts.
These books are great examples of a high-end private press production. Bound in ¾ leather with mottled boards, matching mottled endpapers, top-edge-gilt, deckled foredges on high quality paper with extra-wide margins. Both books have illustrations of varying sizes. Interestingly, the tissue guards are not full page but are cut to fit the picture. And where illustrations are on pages facing each other, each has its own tissue guard. A very nice feature. These are numbered copies out of 1,000 printed. Let’s look at the common features of the two volumes.
The bindings and marbled board and endpapers are identical, other than the actual patterns which would never be the same as each paper is created independently, using the same materials. Note that both books are numbered 138. Not a coincidence or some kind of faked limitation. Rather, in my estimation, this indicates that the books were sold by subscription to members. This press had different series, and this one was called the Luxembourg Edition. So, the original owner would have been the 138th person to sign up for the series. There is no listing of the books in the series and the volumes are not dated. I would guess they were produced in the late 1800s or early 1900s.
Let’s look at each volume.
Jean and Jeannette; Theophile Gautier; with illustrations by Ad. Lalauze; preface by Léo Charetie; Société des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Theophile Gautier (1811-1872), was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as disparate as Balzac, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Pound, Eliot, James, Proust and Wilde.
Gautier started as a painter and later turned to art criticism. He was strongly committed to Denis Diderot's idea that the critic should have the ability to describe the art such that the reader might "see" the art through his description. In 1862 he was elected chairman of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts) with a board which included Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, Gustave Doré and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
Adolphe Lalauze (1838 – 1906) was a prolific French etcher who made the illustrations for many books. He won various awards and was made a knight of the Legion of Honour. During his lifetime he was called "one of the most skillful original etchers of the modern French school." An 1889 book described him as an etcher with extreme facility who composed elegant vignettes and frontispieces. Yes, indeed.
A Simple Heart; Gustave Flaubert; with illustrations by Emile Adan; preface by A. De Claye; Société des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. The publication of Madame Bovary in 1856 was followed by more scandal than admiration; it was not understood at first that this novel was the beginning of something new: the scrupulously truthful portraiture of life. Gradually, this aspect of his genius was accepted, and it began to crowd out all others. At the time of his death, he was widely regarded as the most influential French Realist.
Emile Adan (1839-1937) began his artistic training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris under the tutelage of François Edouard Picot and Alexandre Cabanel. Adan was a loyal participant of the annual Paris Salon, admitting works from 1863 until the year of his death in 1937. Besides painting landscapes, which proved especially suitable for reproduction, the artist also illustrated various books such as Les Fables of La Fontaine and Flaubert's A Simple Heart.
Great writers and great illustrators in great books – ensconced in our personal library.
My muse, Sabrina
Sabrina lives on the shoreline of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia. She has been there for a long, long time. She doesn’t get around much, but she enjoys being in the salt water. She changes her hair style twice a day and changes her glasses to fit the weather conditions and her temperament.
I walked past Sabrina almost every day for the past twenty some years, first with Gryphon and then with Freyja, our wonderful Belgian Shepherds. Now, I walk by Sabrina by myself.
She started to reach out to me just over the past couple of years. I started to stop and look at her beautiful hair and she started to respond to my attention by planting thoughts in my head. Good thoughts, encouraging thoughts, stimulating thoughts, influential thoughts. She has become my muse. Although, I must confess some days she is stone-faced and refuses to talk to me. Thankfully, not often.
