Description

Alméry Lobel-Riche Etching ‘Le Spleen de Paris II’ 1921

‘Le Spleen de Paris. Petits Poèmes en Prose’ de Charles Baudelaire

Edition illustrée de trente Eaux-fortes du peintre graveur Lobel-Riche

Edité sur seulement 233 exemplaires sur vélin d’Arches

Editorial: Le Livre du Bibliophile, G. & R. Briffaut, Ëditeurs, Paris

The etching on sale is one of the 30 original large format etchings

Size : 33 x 25 cm

Signed in the plate

Absolute mint condition

Comes from a private collection

Info on : Alméry Lobel-Riche

Son of Alméric Louis Riche and Mathilda Demonfaucon, Alméric Riche studied at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and then in Paris from 1895.

A student of Léon Bonnat, Antoine Calbet and Paul Saïn, he exhibited his paintings very early on at the Salon des Artistes Français where he received several special encouragements, an honorable mention and the silver medal.

For his first works, he illustrated novels published in booklet form, such as L’Oncle Scipion by André Theuriet (1907).

During the occupation, during the Second World War, Lobel-Riche chose to settle in Meymac, in Corrèze, where his wife was originally from. He lived in the Durand house opposite the church, at the corner of rue Saint-Jean. He asked to be buried in the Meymac cemetery.

During this forced stay, he practiced mainly painting, his engraving and lithography material having remained in his Parisian workshop. For if Lobel-Riche is an excellent painter, he acquired his notoriety by his talent of engraver, who masters as well the techniques of the etching, the dry point as of the engraving on wood.

Pierre Mac Orlan wrote about him:

“Lobel-Riche was always an artist deeply attracted to disciplines enamored of calm and balance, which feminine beauty dominates when it has outgrown the somewhat facile creations of gallantry. In the world of his classical drawings, learned in their classicism, the original light is that of beauty conceived in aesthetic mythologies.”

Info on etching :

Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In traditional pure etching, a metal plate (usually of copper, zinc or steel) is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with a pointed etching needle where the artist wants a line to appear in the finished piece, exposing the bare metal. The échoppe, a tool with a slanted oval section, is also used for “swelling” lines. The plate is then dipped in a bath of acid, known as the mordant (French for “biting”) or etchant, or has acid washed over it. The acid “bites” into the metal to a depth depending on time and acid strength, leaving behind the drawing carved into the wax on the plate. Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving (e.g., Rembrandt) or aquatint (e.g., Francisco Goya). Aquatint uses acid-resistant resin to achieve tonal effects.

Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or “matrix”) with a hard-pointed “needle” of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The difference is in the use of tools, and that the raised ridge along the furrow is not scraped or filed away as in engraving.