Maurice Denis, On the Pale Silver Sofa (Sur le canapé d'argent pâle), 1899
Vollard’s print series
Some time around 1896, Vollard commissioned four Nabis artists from his stable to produce several highly ambitious print series.
Each comprised ten colour lithographs on a loosely defined theme, such as Edouard Vuillard’s ‘landscapes and interiors’, or various ‘aspects of Paris’ by Pierre Bonnard, all of which are among the finest achievements of late-nineteenth-century printmaking.
The artists spent no fewer than four years working on their series, in which they sought to capture fleeting moments and moods from everyday life in patterns, lines and colours.
Pierre Bonnard, Cover, 1897
Vollard’s print albums
The importance and success of L’Estampe originale prompted Vollard to begin producing a variety of print albums featuring lithographs, etchings and woodcuts by the peintres-graveurs from 1896 onwards.
He followed André Marty’s example by publishing work not only by members of the latest avant-garde movements, such as the Nabis, but also that by more established painters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
It did not concern him that they had little or no experience of lithography, as his head printer Auguste Clot excelled in translating their rapid sketches into fully-fledged prints.
Further reading
- Ambroise Vollard, Recollections of a Picture Dealer, London 1936
- Una E. Johnson, Ambroise Vollard, Editeur: Prints, Books, Bronzes, New York 1977
- Rebecca A. Rabinow (ed.), et al., Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, New York 2006