AMBROISE VOLLARD, PUBLISHER OF ETCHINGS
Pierre Bonnard, Couverture pour l'album d'estampes originales de la Galerie Vollard (Cover for album of original etchings produced by the Vollard Gallery), 1897
Paul Cezanne, Les Grands Baigneurs (Bathers), 1896-1898
Vollard, publisher of etchings
Over half of the 157 works donated by Lucien Vollard are etchings. This proportion demonstrates Vollard’s passion for publishing original etchings. Very early on, his expert eye, trained through spending many hours browsing the stalls of the merchants along the banks of the Seine, led him to build up a collection of drawings and etchings by innovative late 19thcentury artists.
The founding of the Société des aquafortistes (Society of aquaforists) in 1862, followed by the Société des Peintres-Graveurs (Society of painters-engravers) in 1889, stimulated the production of artistic engravings in France and they then achieved a true status as works of art. Ambroise Vollard, one of the drivers behind this recognition, played an essential role in the renewal of colour lithography at the end of the 19thcentury. He very quickly understood that etchings, if they were to cease being exclusively produced by engravers, had to adapt to the speed of production by modern artists.
Virtually all of the etchings in the Leon-Dierx art gallery were produced by the most important figures of modern painting: Blanche, Bonnard, Cezanne, Denis, Redon, Renoir or Vuillard. He always encouraged the painters he supported to create outside their usual technique and to produce multiple works, more easily disseminated and representing a less costly means of making themselves known as artists.
In 1896, in his art gallery in the rue Laffitte, Vollard held a first exhibition devoted solely to « Painters-Engravers ». The exhibition met with great success and reinforced his project for publishing original etchings. At the same time, he published his first Album des peintres-graveurs (Album of painters-engravers), consisting of 22 plates. The following year, he published a second collection of 32 plates of lithographs, essentially in colour. He then developed a project for a third and final collective work, with a new album announced for 1898, but which remained unfinished.
Maurice Denis, Nos âmes, en des gestes lents (Our souls, in slow gestures) in the album Amour (Love), pl. n°9, 1898-1899
Ker-Xavier Roussel, La source, 1900
The collective albums
Since these experiments did not meet with the success he had hoped for, Vollard decided to abandon his collective projects and focus on individual albums. Between 1898 and 1900, he contacted Maurice Denis for the album Amour (Love), Pierre Bonnard for Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris (Aspects of life in Paris), Edouard Vuillard for Paysages et intérieurs (Landscapes and interiors) and Ker-Xavier Roussel for the album Paysage (Landscape). All these albums are remarkable collections of engravings produced by the group of Nabis.
The album of lithographs by Maurice Denis entitled Amour, consisting of 12 plates as well as the cover, was published in 1898-1899 by the master printer Auguste Clot. All the plates are inspired by the figure of Marthe during the period when she was engaged to the artist: she is depicted in various situations, on plates of soft delicate tints.
In 1913, he published a series of etchings with Picasso, Les Saltimbanques (The Acrobats), and in particular the famous Suite Vollard (Vollard Series) of 100 plates in 1937, after collaborating with Georges Rouault and Chagall.
