Artists’ books
Books and journals had a significant impact on the growth of the 19th-century art trade. New printing techniques made it easier to reproduce textual and visual information, which therefore became more widely available. This provided artists with a source of knowledge and inspiration, as well as a means of reaching a broad audience.
The downside was that the technical progress also resulted in mass production (and even overproduction) of poor-quality books. A countermovement therefore also emerged in this century in the form of a new type of book production and collection: the contemporary luxury edition. The artists’ book was a special type of illustrated book edition. At the end of the 19th century, artists discovered that illustrating a book was a potential means of expressing their own artistic vision.
Both the Van Gogh Museum Library and the museum’s collection of works on paper feature exquisite examples of these illustrated publications. The collections offer a comprehensive overview of the enormous diversity of books and journals from the time. Some of the finest examples were put on display especially for the members of the Association internationale de bibliophilie.
