Henry Somm

Night Life at the Moulin Rouge

c. 1890

Preliminary drawing for Remy de Gourmont, Couleurs, published in Le Mercure de France (Colors, new tales follow old things), 1908 Graphite and colored pencil, 1926 Signed in pencil l...

Preliminary drawing for Remy de Gourmont, Couleurs, published in Le Mercure de France (Colors, new tales follow old things), 1908 Graphite and colored...

La Promenade Etching, soft-ground, aquatint & drypoint, Signed in pencil lower left Published by Edmund Sagot, Paris Edition of 50 in black only, aside from the edition of 50 in co...

En passant (Passing by) Drypoint, 1909 Unsigned (as issued in the deluxe portfolio) From the album "Les Bars" (8 plates plus cover illustration) Edition: 30, this state with remarque Published by Gustav Pellet, Paris A very rich impression wwith burr Condition: Excellent Image/Plate size: 9 7/8 x 6 3/8 inches Reference: Arwas 391a (remarque) Exteens 277 i/II IFF 148 (portfolio) Louis Auguste Mathieu Legrand (29 September 1863 – 1951) was a French artist, known especially for his aquatint engravings, which were sometimes erotic. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur for his work in 1906. Life Legrand was born in the city of Dijon in the east of France. He worked as a bank clerk before deciding to study art part-time at Dijon's Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He won the Devosge prize at the school in 1883.[2] In 1884 Legrand studied engraving under the Belgian printmaker Félicien Rops. Legrand's artworks include etchings, graphic art and paintings. His paintings featured Parisian social life. Many were of prostitutes, dancers and bar scenes, which featured a sense of eroticism. According to the Hope Gallery, "Louis Legrand is simply one of France's finest early twentieth century masters of etching." His black and white etchings especially provide a sense of decadence; they have been compared to those of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, though his drawings of the Moulin Rouge, the can-can dance and the young women of Montmartre preceded Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings of similar scenes. He made over three hundred prints of the night life of Paris. They demonstrate "his remarkable powers of observation and are executed with great skill, delicacy, and an ironic sense of humor that pervades them all." Two of his satirical artworks caused him to be tried for obscenity. The first, "Prostitution" was a symbolic drawing which depicted a naked girl being grasped by a dark monster which had the face of an old woman and claws on its hands; the second, "Naturalism", showed the French novelist Émile Zola minutely studying the thighs of a woman with a magnifying glass. Defended by his friend the lawyer Eugène Rodrigues-Henriques (1853–1928), he was found not guilty in the lower court, but was convicted in the appeal court and then given a short prison sentence for refusing to pay his fine. Legrand was made famous by his colour illustrations for Gil Blas magazine's coverage of the can-can, with text by Rodrigues (who wrote under the pseudonym Erastene Ramiro). It was a tremendous success, with the exceptional quantity of 60,000 copies of the magazine being printed and instantly sold out in 1891. In 1892, at the instigation of the publishing house Dentu, Legrand made a set of etchings of his Gil Blas illustrations. The etchings were published in a book, Le Cours de Danse Fin de Siecle (The End of the Century Dance Classes). Legrand took a holiday in Brittany, which inspired him to engrave a set of fourteen lithographs of simple country life called Au Cap de la Chevre (On Goat Promontory). It was published by Gustave Pellet who became a close friend of Legrand's. Pellet eventually published a total of 300 etchings by Legrand, who was his first artist; he also published Toulouse-Lautrec and Félicien Rops among others. He did not only work in graphics; he exhibited paintings at the Paris salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts starting in 1902. In 1906 he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. Legrand died in obscurity in 1951. A retrospective exhibition was held at the Félicien Rops museum in Namur, Belgium in 2006 to celebrate his graphic art. The art collector Victor Arwas published a catalogue raisonné for the occasion. Books illustrated de Maupassant, Guy: Cinq Contes Parisiens, 1905. Poe, Edgar Alan: Quinze Histoires d'Edgar Poe...

Joan Cardona Lladós (1877-1957) - Modernist Paris scene - Mixed media (charcoal and white wax). Drawing measurements 40x29 cm. Frame measurements 66x54 cm. He was born in Barcelona on June 30, 1877, he was registered with the name of Juan Bautista José Pedro. His parents Josep Cardona i Farré (Sant Salvador, 1852-Barcelona, ​​?) and Maria Lladós i Vidal (Isona, 1855-Barcelona, ​​1935) came from Sant Salvador de Toló and Isona, respectively, two towns very close to Tremp, in the Pallars Jussà region, close to the Lleida Pyrenees. The Cardona Lladós family was of humble origins, linked to the rural and peasant world. José Cardona and María Lladós married around 1876, when they were twenty-five and twenty-one years old respectively. The couple decided to improve their precarious situation by moving to live in Barcelona. In 1877 Joan Cardona was born in the family home, at 62 Mediana de San Pedro Street, in the Ribera neighborhood of Barcelona and very close to the Rec Comtal. Joan Cardona was the firstborn of three brothers. When he was six years old, his sister Consuelo was born (1883) and later his younger sister, María (1888), was born. Josep Cardona i Farré was a day laborer and lived at least until the birth of his third daughter, María, in 1888. Her death, for reasons unknown to us, would occur shortly after. After the death of Josep Cardona, León Farré i Duró (Isona, 1867-Barcelona, ​​1932) became part of the family nucleus with his mother María Lladós, who took care of the child Cardona and his sisters Consuelo and María. Farré learned to play the guitar and was the most extraordinary disciple of the composer and guitarist Francesc Tàrrega i Eixea (Vila-real, 1852-Barcelona, ​​1909). Joan Cardona had in her stepfather the man who instilled in her a special musical and artistic sensitivity. The young Cardona took classes at the Academia Baixas, inaugurated in 1892 by the painter Joan Baixas i Carreter and installed on Carrer del Pi, a private center where a good batch of leading Catalan Modernisme artists were trained. Cardona married Clemencia Parade Cazabat at the beginning of the century. Daughter of Carles Parade and Amara Cazabat, she was born in 1870 in Bagnères de Bigorre...

A Night in Paris is an original decorative object realized by Pietro Scoppetta in 1911. Mixed media on paper. Hand-signed and dated on the lower left corner: Pietro Scoppetta 1911. A frame is included. Very good conditions. Very elegant, beautiful impressionistic work realized in the first years of the XX Century by the important Italian artist Pietro Scoppetta. The work is characterized by a very impressionistic stroke and touch and depicts a scene during a Parisian night. The figures of the woman in the streets are only sketched but we can feel the elegance and the beauty of the Paris during the fin du siècle. The work has been realized by Pietro Scoppetta (Amalfi, 1863 - Neaples, 1920) an Italian artist. He dedicated himself initially to architectural studies, he abandoned them to form artistically, under the guidance of Giacomo Di Chirico. Resident in Naples, he had the opportunity to live in a climate of strong movements of cultural evolution. Scoppetta decided to leave Italy for abroad, and stayed a long time in London and Paris. In Paris, where he lived between 1897 and 1903, he joined the large group of Neapolitan painters, attracted by the bourgeois suggestions of the Belle Époque, including Lionello Balestrieri...

Jean-Emile Laboureur (1877-1943), Sortie de Theatre a Londres, etching and drypoint, 1911, signed in pencil lower left [also signed and dated in the plate upper right]. Reference: Laboureur 104, third state (of 3). Published for La Societe des amis de l’eau-forte, with the blindstamp with the inscription: Circle Librairie Estampes. From an edition in the third state of 109; there were also 5 impressions of the first state and five of the second state. In excellent condition, the full sheet with deckle edges bottom and sides, 6 3/4 x 14; a remarque lower left 2 x 3 1/2, the sheet 12 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches. Provenance: unknown collector’s mark verso (GOE in oval) A fine rich impression, printed in dark brown ink on cream laid paper with the Arches watermark. The small remarque lower left is actually another print printed on a separate plate; it shows a man running after a London horse...

Artist: Tony Minartz (French, 1873-1944) Title: "L'Avant-Foyer de l'Opera" Portfolio: Revue de l'Art Ancien & Moderne *Issued unsigned Year: 1903 Medium: Original Etching on cream laid paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer: Unknown Publisher: Revue de l'Art Ancien & Moderne, Paris, France Framing: Recently framed in a traditional gold and black moulding with 100% cotton rag matting Framed size: 18.63" x 16.38" Sheet size: 12" x 9" Image size: 9" x 7.25" Condition: In excellent condition Notes: Printed in one color: bistre. This review was founded in 1897 in the continuity of the review Les Beaux-Arts published between 1861 and 1865; Jules Comte, the founder, entitled his first issue Les Beaux-Arts - Revue nouvelle then changed the title to La Revue de l'art ancien et moderne. Jules Comte directed the review until his death in 1912. Raymond Woog took over , who was provisional director until the start of the war in July 1914. In 1919, André Dezarrois took over this review and was its director until December 1937, date of last issue (published in January 1938). In the meantime, it publishes the Bulletin of ancient and modern art, which has gained a certain notoriety in the community. Biography: Tony Minartz, pseudonym of Antoine Guillaume, born 8 April 1873 to Cannes and died in that city on 13 December 1944 Is a painter, draftsman , illustrator and engraver French. Painter autodidact , Tony Minartz starts to become known in 1896 by exhibiting paintings at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts , and then decorates the Pompadour theater of painted panels for fashion shows " Grand Guignol ", directed by L. Darthenay. In 1903, Henri Béraldi , with whom he worked, praised him in The Journal of ancient and modern art, writing that "it was thirty years ago," and he has received advice from Paul Renouard to be formed the technique of etching ; Béraldi adds that his favorite subjects are "Paris at night Paris at night, always." Minartz also gives them some high-remarkable in The Journal of ancient and modern art until 1910: balls, cafe concerts, Parisian in their most beautiful dresses, but also music-halls, music halls, restaurants, large and small theaters, are the preferred settings of his compositions. Its fertile period seems to end in 1914. In addition to the National Salon, Minartz exhibited in Paris at the gallery Bartholomew (1903), the Independent Living (1905, 1906) and the gallery Devambez (1909) and received the Academic Palms . He occasionally collaborates with periodic illustrated as The Almanac Sports (Ollendorff, 1899), or satirical as Gil Blas...