Adolphe Willette, The Publisher André Marty, 1894
Compiler of L’Estampe originale
Adolphe Willette’s portrait shows Marty dressed in a sharp suit, hurrying through the rain with a portfolio of prints under his arm. He did indeed spend the period 1893–95 rushing about Paris for L’Estampe originale, from artist to printer, and paper supplier to collector, to achieve the infinitely complex creation of this print album.
In addition to his immense organisational talent, Marty had an excellent eye for artistic quality; Together, the 74 artists he was able to recruit for the album offered a cross-section of fin-de-siècle modern art.
Printmaking and the decorative revival
Marty saw the promotion of original printmaking as part of a broader movement to raise the decorative arts to the level of fine art. He published the magazine Le Livre vert, in which he constantly reiterated that the genius of the individual artist is the sole determinant of what qualities as ‘art’. A print or a vase could, therefore, be every bit as artistic as a painting. To lend weight to this Art-nouveau thinking, he produced not only prints designed by artists, but also decorative objects like brooches and figurines.
Pierre Bonnard, Cover, 1895
Henri Gabriel Ibels, Cover and introduction, 1893
Further reading
- Roger Marx, ‘Preface’, L’Estampe originale. Première année, Paris, 1893
- André Marty, Le livre vert, Paris, 1896–97
- Patricia Eckert Boyer, ‘L’Estampe originale and the Revival of Decorative Arts in Late Nineteenth-Century France’, in L’Estampe originale. Artistic Printmaking in France 1893–1895, Zwolle, 1991, pp. 26–49