L'Estampe originale
According to critic Roger Marx, the mission of André Marty, compiler of the print album L’Estampe originale, was ‘to constitute and maintain a repertory which would serve as evidence before history of the art of our time.’
He accomplished this with great success. No fewer than 74 different artists supplied a total of 97 prints spread over nine albums.
The portfolios were published in an edition of 100 and were sold every three months on a subscription basis to bourgeois print collectors.
The project rapidly assumed mythical status and is still viewed today as a prestigious project that did much to spark the craze for printmaking during the fin de siècle.
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The criteria of the original print
Marx explained the basic idea behind the selection in the foreword to the first album. Marty, he wrote, was more interested in the individual qualities and expression of the artist than in particular schools, styles, or techniques.
The artist’s original intentions would remain clear provided he worked according to the criteria of the original print.
This meant that the artist had to be involved throughout the creative process, from the initial design and the selection of the paper to the printing of the final etching, lithograph, or woodcut.
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Complete overview of fin-de-siècle printmaking
Because the individual qualities of the artist were Marty’s only criterion, all modern styles and movements from the fin de siècle were represented in the album.
Prints by the latest artists’ groups, such as the School of Pont-Aven, appeared in the same portfolio as work by more established names like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
The first album was nonetheless firmly devoted to the avant-garde, with colour lithographs by the Nabis and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Further reading
Roger Marx, ‘Préface’, L’Estampe originale. Première année, Parijs 1893
Donna M. Stein, Donald H. Karshan, L’Estampe originale. A catalogue raisonné, New York 1970
Phillip Dennis Cate, Patricia Eckert Boyer, L’Estampe originale. Artistic Printmaking in France 1893-1895, Zwolle 1991
