Dessins Originaux de Paul Wagnez

Cloth. Very Good. Small folio, 33 by 25 cm. 38 pp. of pen and crayon drawings, most of which are both erotic and comical, mounted in "Henschel's Skizzenbuch". The accompanying text, often narrative poems, is written by Wagniez as well. The French-Belgian artist Paul Wagniez (1876 - 1935) studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts et des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and became known for book illustration. He was a versatile artist, nonetheless, at home with still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and action scenes such as those of the hunt, and equally proficient in oils, watercolors and other media. Most of the works contained in the album are from the early 1930s, shortly before Wagniez's death, and these were dedicated to a friend, Robert Villefumade, who most surely compiled this album in honor of Wagniez. The overall nature of the content is not readily apparent as one opens the front cover. On that cover there is a funny picture of a squat obese woman surrounded ludicrously with mathematic iconology. Humor aside, this offers no hint of the risqué. Pasted to the FFEP is a moody youthful self-portrait, circa 1900. Following are two additional somber works -- another, more mature Wagniez self-portrait executed in 1928, and a pretty yard scene of a cat, dated 1934. Then the fun begins. The erotica bears some resemblance to Epinal cartoon sheets in the arrangement of vignettes on the page amidst text, in their artistic styling, and in being, essentially, graphic short stories, except unlike Epinals, the content is not meant for juvenile eyes. In one tale, "Chut, chut! Tu vas reveiller Grand-mere . . . " a young woman exhorts her lover to be quiet lest they wake the sleeping elderly woman. Another piece involves a lecherous traveller unexpectedly rebuffed in his advances. Other story lines show a wet nurse who doesn't feel compelled to nap with her ward, the uninhibited dreams of young women, and a Flapper named Fanny who "se chauffe en hiver/A la flamme elle expose son derriere . . . " This being the land of saucy louche-ness, one can find tingly hints of sapphic love and other taboos defied. Not all the action is harmlessly consensual by any means -- there is a fair amount of violation and rape. The stories are set in the past, with particular relish for the period spanning from Henri IV to Louis XIII, but scenes also set in mythology, the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century. A few of the final entries are sketchy, unfinished cartoons, but overall, the work is meticulously detailed and rendered with great fluency. Moderate to heavy wear to the cloth binding, with tears along joints, bunching of the cloth, soiling, etc.