Les Mois. Douze Compositions

Book Description

Paris: G. De Malherbe. 1894. 4to. S Wrappers... Fine.. Paris: G. De Malherbe (1894 or 1896). 4to, original printed gray wrappers, slightly soiled; plates fine. A ravishing series of twelve color plates, one for each month, designed for the calendar of La Belle Jardinière, a Parisian department store, depicting pretty young women tending their gardens; the gardens and the women’s clothes and activities change with the seasons. The plates are engraved on wood and printed on vellum in "Gillotage," an early form of photolithography invented by Grasset’s friend Firmin Gillot. The work is particulary lovely on vellum as compared to the paper examples. Harvard, Turn of a Century, 50: ". a lady’s book à la mode with comely maidens dressed in ‘aesthetic’ free-flowing costumes. these garden settings are a foil for his sense of formalized surface patterns.".

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