L’Estampe originale: A Graphic Treasure

L’Estampe originale, published in France during the mid 1890s, is widely regarded by critics and collectors as one of the greatest collaborations in the history of printmaking. This extremely rare portfolio, originally conceived as a celebration of the original print, and especially color lithography, features ninety-five works of graphic art by seventy-four influential artists from France, Switzerland, Belgium, England, and the United States.

This dynamic and colorful portfolio was created when a resurgence of interest in printmaking as an original art form was taking place in the late nineteenth century. For the first time, painters and sculptors focused on the potentials of color, texture, and luminous effects in the graphic arts. Nearly every late nineteenth-century style, from Impressionism to Symbolism to Art Nouveau, is represented in the L’Estampe originale portfolio. A rising middle class appreciated the availability of prints by revolutionary artists at a reasonable price.

The creative and far-sighted Parisian publisher André Marty issued and distributed nine quarterly installments of L’Estampe originale from 1893 to 1895, each in an edition of one hundred. Each artist decided on the format and presentation of their print—the paper used, the technique employed, even the position of the embossed blind stamp by contemporary sculptor Alexandre Charpentier. Although some artists such as Jean-Francois Raffaëlli and Lucien Pissarro printed their own etchings and woodcuts, most of the artists collaborated with master printers, stretching the concept of originality, which once implied that fine artists did everything by themselves.

This exceptional complete set of L’Estampe originale is drawn from the collection of Beverly and Stuart Denenberg of Los Angeles. Over the years, commercial considerations drove the removal of individual works from editions of L’Estampe by artists with rising salability, such as Pierre Bonnard, Paul Gauguin, Paul Signac, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and James McNeill Whistler. Of the 100 editions, only six are intact as complete sets. Five are in museum collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo; and the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia.

Presented by: Joe Orgill Family Fund

Organized by: Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA