Frontispice pour le Nouveau Larousse illustré (Frontispiece for the Nouveau Larousse illustré dictionary) The 1880s saw Eugène Grasset begin a prolific output of ornate lettering, headers, typographic ornaments, and binding stamps. His partnership with Larousse, a publisher specialising in dictionaries and encyclopaedias, proved particularly fruitful.
Portrait en plein air du châtelain de Montagny et de ses enfants (Open-air portrait of the Chatelain of Montagny and his children) François Bocion was not a regular portrait painter. The few works he did complete in the genre were mostly commissions. The number of group portraits and open-air portraits he worked on can each…
Intérieur de la Villa de Mécène à Tivoli (Interior of the Villa of Maecenas, Tivoli) This watercolour takes viewers into what eighteenth-century visitors believed to be the ruined villa of Caius Maecenas in Tivoli. The site is in fact the ruins of the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor, dating…
Griche la borgne, Ma Ville (One-eyed Griche, My Town) Marguerite Burnat-Provins’s personality, like her artistic and literary work, encompassed two contradictory facets. She was born in Arras in northern France, married in Vevey, then travelled the Valais, the Far East and South…
Le Criquet suivi de ses serviteurs portant des présents se rend au tombeau de ses ancêtres, Ma Ville (The Cricket, followed by his servants bearing gifts, approaches the tomb of his ancestors, My Town) Marguerite Burnat-Provins was the eldest of eight children born to a cultivated family in the Pas-de-Calais. She began drawing at the age of four. She showed little interest in toys, dolls, jewellery or…
Portrait d’un arbre indien 1 (Portrait of an Indian tree 1) This painting of a wooded landscape is typical of French artist Philippe Cognée’s work. It reflects his deep appreciation for nature, his use of a restrained colour palette—blue for the sky, green for…
Programme pour “Père” de Strindberg (Programme for Strindberg’s The Father) Félix Vallotton made his mark not only as a painter, but also as an illustrator, particularly in the decade from 1890 to 1900 when he worked widely in the press, publishing, and advertising.
Paravent. Baigneuses au bord de l’eau (Screen. Bathers by the water) The spring of 1920 saw Gustave Buchet leave Geneva for Paris, where he was to spend the next twenty or so years. By 1922 he was courting Marguerite Robert de Rutté, who became…
Intérieur aux deux verres (Interior with two glasses) Marius Borgeaud’s interiors are bathed in warm light that seems to bring time to a standstill. Each object is a solid, immediately identifiable presence, and it takes the viewer time to register the…
Le Colin-maillard (Blind man’s buff) This painting was shown at the Paris Salon in year V of the French Revolution (i.e. 1796) and purchased in 1798 by Napoleon’s uncle Joseph Fesch a few years before he was appointed a cardinal.