Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol

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Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol

1cupidum
Avr 10, 2021, 2:58 am

Sculptor Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) illustrated or decorated around fifteen books in his lifetime. He is the exception that confirms my rule to concentrate my collecting interests in forgotten or almost forgotten artists.

During a cruise to Greece and Italy, I believe that it was in 1908, together with, among others, Count Harry Kessler, he started contemplating the illustration of a few ancient works.

For years, he searched for a suitable paper, and when he didn't find anything satisfactory, he started, together with his nephew Gaspard Maillol, to research how paper was manufactured by hand centuries earlier.

Here are three photos of Aristide (in the hat) and Gaspard (the other bearded person) at their tiny paper mill near Montval, probably just before the outbreak of the great war:







Already before the war, Maillol had started working on The Eclogues by Virgil. After the war, the book was finally published by Kessler at his Cranach Presse, first in a German language edition, then a French and Finally an English - all printed on Maillol paper.

I do not yet have this book in my collection since I haven't found the right one. Prices are all over the place and unfortunately, most copies suffer from foxing.

Hitler came along, and that was the end of the Cranach Presse. Fortunately Philippe Gonin (Swiss, living in France) came along and published a few of Maillol's books, the last one in 1958(!).

In 1937 Maillol and Gonin published Daphnis and Chloe in a French edition of 500 copies and an English edition of 250 copies for the London art gallery A. Zwemmer.

The wood cuts were printed in black in the French edition but in a dark olive in the English. The French edition was issued unbound while the English books were all bound in parchment.

They were all printed on the paper that Maillol had "rediscovered".

The English edition used Thornley's 17th century translation, which I find appropriate for this book illustrated with rustic wood cuts:













































































































2wcarter
Avr 10, 2021, 4:39 am

>1 cupidum:
Just lovely!!

3cupidum
Avr 10, 2021, 1:04 pm

>2 wcarter:
It sure is.

As are four more books that I have planned for this thread.

The other books are in French, so those who are not interested in such are warned here since there will be quite a number of photos that will have to load.

4cupidum
Avr 11, 2021, 3:39 am

Virgil's Georgics was a book that was 42 years in the making, from the first idea in 1908 to the final production. It was yet another project that Philippe Gonin took over from the Cranach Presse of Count Kessler. Gonin sent out a prospectus in 1937, but then again - along came Hitler, so the work was interrupted. Maillol passed away in 1944 and it wasn't until 1950 that the printing was finished in an edition of 750 with 100 double suites plus a few "proof" pulls on Chinese paper.















































































































































































































5SebRinelli
Modifié : Avr 11, 2021, 8:41 am

>4 cupidum:
That is an incredibly beautiful book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

I have to admit that I didn’t read the Georgics yet. Is there also a bit background about myths and so on?

6cupidum
Avr 11, 2021, 9:22 am

>5 SebRinelli: No myths in this work - it is about agriculture and beekeeping.

The LEC that was printed by Mardersteig in Verona with wood engravings by Bruno Bramanti is also a very beautiful book,

7ultrarightist
Avr 11, 2021, 2:04 pm

<4 Gorgeous! Thank you for posting so many pictures of it. The last pictures are interesting. I assume they are of pages at the end of the book, after the colophon, repeating in list or index form (some of?) the decorated capitals used , and repeating some of the illustrations, some in maroon.

8cupidum
Avr 11, 2021, 2:52 pm

>7 ultrarightist: The last photos show a few engravings from the suites that accompanied 100 copies of the book (volume 3 in the first photo) - one set in black, one in red as well as a handful of pulls on Chinese paper of unfinished engravings.

Coming up soon: Horace (Horatius).

9cupidum
Avr 14, 2021, 1:32 pm

Another Kessler/Cranach Presse project (more about that later in the thread, when I am done with all photos) that was taken over by Philippe Gonin and finally completed in 1958, 14 years after Maillol's death. The Odes of Horace.








































































































































































































































10cupidum
Modifié : Avr 22, 2021, 3:29 am

Now a little digression. The year after the publication of The Georgics, Philippe Gonin also produced The Eclogues in an edition of 200 copies. Maillol had already made woodcuts for this work and Count Kessler had published it during the 1920's. What Gonin did was to ask Maillol's former mistress, Lucile Passavant to make woodcuts for his edition.

Already in the early 1930's Kessler writes in his diary that he had suggested that Maillol taught her how to make woodcuts and that Maillol enthusiastically agreed.

In spite of what Gonin writes, it is quite possible that The Eclogues for The Cranach Press is the only book where the woodcuts were made by Maillol himself, because he suffered from poor eyesight. Most woodcuts for his later books might have been cut by Passavant or someone else after Maillol's drawings. During the early twentieth century "autograph editions" and "artists' books" were the vogue and it is quite likely that Gonin thought that it was important that all woodcuts were by the sculptor's own hand.

As can be seen, Passavant certainly knew Maillol's work well when she did her illustrations. They are similar but at the same time quite different:







































































































I have just finally acquired a copy of Maillol's Eclogues that was published by Count Kessler at the Cranach Presse in 1926. It has some foxing. For some reason most, if not all, copies of this book suffer from foxing. Recently, I held a copy without foxing in my hands, but I returned it to the seller because I was convinced that it had been cleaned. The paper was a shade too white. The paper from Maillol's mill was produced without any bleach or other chemicals and the result is a pearly offwhite paper with an almost velvety feel.

I will have to see if ever an unfoxed copy comes my way, but at the same time, most bound copies were bound in leather with (often a lot of) gold, that, in my opinion, doesn't suit this work, so I will have to disregard them. If bound, a work like this ought to be bound in plain parchment:



























































































A lot has been written about both Maillol and Kessler. Kessler's diaries have been published abridged in English and some fifteen years ago Das Buch als Kunstwerk - Die Cranach Presse 1913-1931 by John Dieter Brinks saw the light of day. For those who prefer to read English, there was also an English edition of 350 copies titled The Book as a Work of Art:









Kessler's diaries have also recently been published in German in 9000 pages, nine volumes weighing fifteen kilos.

The diaries are worth their weight in gold for those that are interested in learning all about Kessler and Maillol. One can read about the first idea, in 1904, to produce The Eclogues and The Georgics and how Kessler and Maillol visited the greats of book production in England (Maillol's comment when he saw the Kelmscott Chaucer was that there was no light in it - it didn't have any air. He almost suffocated.)

It is also fun to read what Kessler writes about Maillol's jealous wife and his very young mistress Lucile Passvant. What is even more hilarious is to read between the lines about how Maillol early on must have sensed that Kessler was a closet homosexual and used that knowledge to his advantage. He agreed with Kessler that the male body was more beautiful than the female body, but continued to sculpt almost only women…