Artists’ Books in the NGV International

The National Gallery of Victoria has a substantial collection of illustrated and artists books. The presentation of my colleague, Kirsty Grant, last year at this forum introduced the collection of Australian books in the collection. In the brief time available today I wish to briefly discuss a selection of some of the beautiful international books that we have the privilege of looking after. Robert did originally ask me to focus on French artists’ books, relating to an exhibition I curated last year called From Paris with Love: The Graphic Arts in France 1880s-1950s. As I am now preparing for an Albrecht Dürer exhibition, which will open in June, I asked if I could also talk about our early German books. I also wish to show a couple of other strengths of our book collection.

I will start with the illuminated manuscripts we have in our collection, a genre in which art and text are intimately linked. The NGV has five manuscripts (‘written by hand’), which of course was the only way that books could be produced prior to invention of printing. The first image here shows one of the oldest books in Australia, the Byzantine Gospels, made in Constantinople around 1150 AD. We know the creator of this book through the inscription (in Greek) above the frontispiece, which reads O Queen of all as mother of the Divine Word, the donor and writer of the book and painter of the pictures in it is your servant the consecrated Theophanes. This book contains the four Gospels, and Canon tables (which serve as indices for the texts), decorated here showing the labours of the months December, January and February. Foliate headpieces decorate the first page of each gospel, as did a portrait of each evangelist, which have unfortunately been removed from the book.

Although illuminated manuscripts are primarily religious, many did cover other topics, as in this case, a French translation of Livy’s History of Rome, produced around 1400. One of the most spectacular pages is the dedication page, which shows (1) the translator Pierre Bersuire presenting the book to King Jean le Bon, (2) the discovery of Romulus and Remus, (3) Romulus setting forth the laws of Rome and (4) the battle of the Horatii and the Curiatii. This book was produced in one of the leading workshops in Paris, which was run by an unknown artist known as the Cité des Dames Master. Books such as this were usually produced in workshops, collaboratively, with the master being responsible for the miniatures (the word originating from the Latin word minium, for the red pigment that was used). These pages show many of the key features of illuminated books – the exquisite script, miniatures, decorated borders and initials, rubrics (text written in red for emphasis) and line endings.

This slightly earlier work shows these features in great plenitude. Known as the Aspremont Psalter-Hours, what we have here is the Hours section, the psalter section (containing the psalms) being in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This work was commissioned by the knight Joffroy d’Aspremont and his wife Isabelle de Kievraing, and the various religious features are often decorated with humorous drolleries, and images from folklore and secular and knightly life. We can also see an example of a historiated initial, in which an image enhances the narrative within the initial.

While the last work was more Gothic, this next work, made in Italy in 1496, shows the clear influence of the classical imagery of the Renaissance. Here in the image of the Annunciation, the medallions depicting the saints are set within borders of cupids, tritons and other classical grotesques. Books of Hours were popular devotional manuscripts used by the laity in the late medieval period for personal prayer and meditation. So named because they comprised texts to be recited daily at each of the eight canonical hours, these small and portable manuscripts included the Hours of the Virgin, a calendar of saints’ feasts, and numerous offices, psalms, prayers and suffrages, some of which were standard inclusions, while others varied according to local customs and the owner’s spiritual needs.

The last book is also a Book of Hours, known as The Wharncliffe Hours after its nineteenth-century owner. This is one of the finest examples of the mature style of Maître François, a leading French illuminator of the second half of the fifteenth century, whose workshop was in Paris. His illustrations are accompanied by borders of decorative foliage, populated with biblical stories and scenes of rural and courtly pursuits, as can be seen in the announcement to the shepherds. These borders were painted by an unknown assistant, while the Latin text was written by a professional scribe, Jehan Dubrueil. Although the original owner is unknown, the inclusion of saints associated with the diocese of Angers suggests he or she lived there.

In terms of presentation of these books, of course we can only display one page at a time, and we must minimise handling. Those of you who were here last year would have seen Kirsty’s presentation of touchscreens, which were developed for the opening exhibition of NGV.International, in which two of the manuscripts have been made accessible digitally, page by page. Since then, the three remaining books have been photographed; this data will be developed into a similar system. A publication is also being produced on our manuscripts, written by Professor Margaret Manion, a leading scholar on the topic, which is due out in the next few months. All five books will be on display for that launch.

The invention of movable type in the mid-fifteenth century created an industry for the production of printed books and broadsheets, and led to the demise of the illuminated manuscript. The incorporation of images was to become an important element of many publications, particularly as the majority of the European population was illiterate. The NGV has twenty-nine late fifteenth and early sixteenth books, which came in with the remarkable Dürer collection, which was purchased in 1956. A number of these books are on display in our current exhibition Grotesque: The Diabolical and Fantastic in Art. The books produced again varied widely from religious texts, such as this book, commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, of the Revelations of Saint Brigitte (in which the lingering tradition of the rubric can be seen) to moral texts which use graphic imagery as a compelling means of encouraging good conduct.

Sebastian Brant’s moralistic poem Ship of Fools was published for the carnival season of 1494. Describing 110 follies and stupidities, the satirical rhymes were intended to encourage the German people to put aside sinful behaviour. In this 1498 publication, each tale was illustrated with a woodcut (which has equal weighting as the text). Many of these are thought to have been designed by Albrecht Dürer during his journeyman years in Basel. This imaginative secular text gave the artist great freedom to translate the texts, as here where the fool is tempted by the Devil’s hot air to claim found treasure as his own.

Geoffroy de La Tour Landry’s popular ‘conduct book’, written for his daughters in the 1370s, was published widely from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. This remarkable woodcut features in an early German edition, and again is attributed to the young Dürer. It illustrates a story in which God punished a woman who spent excessive time dressing by sending this horrible sight, which drove her mad. Repentant, she was later forgiven and restored to health.

The NGV’s holdings comprise a complete set of the religious and theoretical books that Dürer either decorated or wrote, as well as early journeyman publications. The book that is probably his most famous is The Revelations of Saint John the Divine, better known as The Apocalypse. First published in 1498, this is the first printed book in Western art to be both published and illustrated by an artist, and presents Saint John’s fantastic visions of the end of the world. Dürer’s emphasis on the image is demonstrated by the fifteen full-page woodcuts which precede the relevant text, so that the prominent image is absorbed before the text is read. This book made Dürer famous both north and south of the Alps, and was unprecedented both in the visualisation of Saint John’s apocalyptic prophecies, and in the skill in depicting line, tone and texture through the relief print. The gallery has two bound copies of The Apocalypse as well as individual sheets, which allow these woodcuts to be viewed in a variety of ways.

In the forthcoming exhibition, which will run from June to November 2005, we will have some sixteen books on display, all by or attributed to Dürer.

As a stepping stone to bring me up to nineteenth-century France, let us stop briefly in England with William Blake. While struggling to support himself with his reproductive work, Blake explored his own highly personal prophetic and apocalyptic theology in his poetry, watercolours, engravings and illustrated books, believing that art played an essential role in illuminating the metaphysical realm.

In his exquisite Songs of Innocence, Blake adopted the format of an illustrated children’s book.  It comprises a series of simply worded poems, reminiscent of psalms or hymns which remind the reader of God’s divine presence. Each poem is adorned with neo-classical images and marginalia entwined through the text, depicting tranquil pastoral images of childhood innocence. To create his books, Blake invented the technique of relief etching, inspired, he said, by a vision of his recently deceased brother, Robert. This process reversed the usual method of preparing copper plates for printing, allowing the printing of text and image simultaneously, and gave Blake independence from the costly and market-driven publishing industry. Issued throughout his life, each copy of Songs of Innocence is unique. This fragmentary version, comprising fourteen plates, is printed in green ink on both sides of the page and was handcoloured by Blake, or his wife Catherine, with the delicate pastel colours typical of his early period. It is one of only ten known copies of this early stage of the publication before Blake began binding Songs of Innocence together with the subsequent, more sombre, Songs of Experience (1794).

Blake’s engraved illustrations to Edward Young’s meditative poem The Complaint, and the Consolation or Night Thoughts were commissioned in 1795. Blake produced an extraordinary 537 watercolour designs for this book, of which 43 were engraved for the publication. The NGV’s copy is one of the few deluxe hand-coloured versions, which is thought to have been coloured by a professional colourist following Blake’s model. This book was acquired in 1989 when the Gallery was preparing a major Blake show, an odd fact being that the book contains the bookplate of Robert Sticht, a Tasmanian collector whose collection was acquired for the Gallery in 1923 following his death – minus this book.

Now to the French. Ambroise Vollard is a man probably familiar to many here today through knowledge of his art dealings, or possibly more recently with regards to his collection which is soon to be on display at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston

Vollard was a monumental figure whose prolific and ambitious publishing activities were responsible for the production of many of the greatest print publications of the later 1890s right through to the 1930s, and beyond. Known to be eccentric, volatile and belligerent, many prints and books would not have existed without his inspiration, stubborn persistence and flair.

Vollard arrived in Paris in 1890 from the French colony of La Réunion to study law but swiftly became fascinated by the art he discovered at stalls and bookshops, most of it for sale for a pittance. Selling originally from his rooms, and then a stall, Vollard opened a gallery in 1896 in rue Lafitte, which was known as ‘la rue des tableaux’ (the street of pictures). Willing to support and defend the radical art many despised, among other claims Vollard has credit for giving Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse – three of the great modern masters – their first solo exhibitions.

During the 1890s, Vollard directed much of his attention to the publication of prints. In his memoirs, Vollard recalled that:
My idea was to commission prints from artists who weren’t printmakers by profession ... (I)f the collectors were indifferent, the painters themselves were becoming more and more interested in this alternative mode of self-expression.

Like a few before him, Vollard approached artists to create prints for his multi-artist portfolios which were published in 1896 and 1897, with works by both established artists such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon and James McNeill Whistler as well as many of the younger avant-garde, in particular members of the Nabi, including Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Toulouse-Lautrec (a Nabi associate if not one of the group). Vollard also published individual artists’ albums, such as Bonnard’s Some views of Parisian life and Vuillard’s Landscapes and interiors (both published in 1899) among others.

With the abrupt decline of the satiated print market after 1900, Vollard had made the decision to expand his business to incorporate artists’ books (livres d’artiste). As he recalled:
 ‘Ambroise Vollard, éditeur … that wouldn’t look bad …,’ I thought. Little by little the idea of becoming a publisher, a great publisher of books, took root in my mind.

From his first book publication Parallèlement (1900, not in NGV), in which Bonnard’s sensuous rose-coloured lithographs entwine around the typography of Paul Verlaine’s erotic poetry, Vollard produced numerous projects, continually and carefully coupling artists and texts. Meticulous in the selection of paper, font, design and printing, Vollard once proudly proclaimed ‘I am the architect of my books’.

In 1926, at Vollard’s encouragement, Pablo Picasso began illustrations for Honoré de Balzac’s The unknown masterpiece. This fable tells of an artist who spent ten years trying to encapsulate, in a painting, the essence of female beauty. When his masterpiece was finally unveiled, his uncomprehending friends saw nothing but confused colours and lines, meaningless to everyone except the artist.  Published in 1931, the book was illustrated with reproduced drawings, including the classically restrained The pose of the model, etchings and abstract wood-engraved designs. With this series, Picasso embarked upon his life-long exploration of the relationship between the artist, his model and the creation.

In the following year, 1932, Georges Rouault’s first book Les Réincarnations du Père Ubu was finally published, after a remarkable nineteen years in production. The character of Père Ubu had been created by Alfred Jarry in the grotesque farce Ubu Roi, which was first performed in Paris in 1896.  The play and its sequels used savage humour to attack social and political values of the time, and was an important influence on the later Dada and Surrealist movements. To illustrate this satirical text written by Vollard himself, Rouault controversially extended the notion of ‘artistic’ printmaking by transferring his sketches onto the copper plate photographically, before overworking them in a complex mix of intaglio processes. (The NGV collection includes a portfolio of the images, without the accompanying text). Vollard and Rouault together planned seven projects, which consumed many years of Rouault’s career: only three were completed before Vollard’s death.

Another of Vollard’s projects which caused some controversy was his choice of the young Russian artist Marc Chagall to illustrate Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables. Although the Fables were a hugely popular seventeenth-century reworking of the stories of Aesop and elsewhere, it was considered to be a classic of French literature and many French were horrified that a foreigner was selected for such a task.

The luminous Lion and the rat is one of the 100 dazzling gouaches Chagall prepared for this project, and demonstrates his distinctive style and expressive use of jewel-like colour. Difficulties in translating the intense colour to print resulted in Chagall restarting with monochromatic intaglios, which were repeatedly printed to meet Vollard’s exacting standards. Deluxe editions were delicately hand-coloured by Chagall, as can be seen in three prints in the NGV’s collection. As with many projects planned by Vollard, due possibly to a perfectionist or procrastinatory habit, this was unfinished at his death in a car accident in 1939. It was eventually published by Tériade in 1952.

The genre of the artists’ book flourished through the early twentieth century, with many artists and publishers becoming involved. Matisse is one artist who produced a number of livres d’artiste; this, the poetry of Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé, was his first, printed by Roger Lacourière and published by Albert Skira. Matisse explained his approach:

The problem was to balance each pair of facing pages – the one with the etching white, the other with the typography relatively black. I achieved this by modifying my arabesques in such a way that the spectator’s attention would be interested as much by the entire page as by the promise of reading the text.

(It is interesting to note the use of red capital, which harks back to the rubric of illuminated manuscripts.)

Aristide Maillol is another such artist. Originally a member of the Nabi, Maillol worked in a variety of media (he is regarded as the father of modern French tapestry) , and from the 1910s he illustrated a number of ancient texts, including Virgil’s bucolic Georgics (1937 and 1943), and Longus’s Daphne and Chloe (1937). His incisively carved woodcuts often reflect his study of Japanese prints, yet his images of rural continuity and pastoral serenity recall most strongly his fascination with the simple, atonal naïvety of medieval woodcuts. (Maillol is an interesting artist in that he was determined that every element of his work be appropriate – his tapestries were coloured with vegetable dyes from plants, and he and his nephew established a mill to create the Montval paper he uses in his books.)

I will finish up with this exquisite book which unfortunately is not in our collection, but which we borrowed from a private collector for our recent French exhibition. Spaniard Joan Miró arrived in Paris in 1920 and was soon captivated by the theoretical and literary discussions of Surrealist writers. Illustrating Surrealist poet Paul Éluard’s poetry, A Toute Épreuve is one of the most brilliant artists’ books of the twentieth century, an astonishing collaboration over twelve years between artist, author, assistant, printers and publisher. Miró’s dream-like, amorphous shapes printed in vibrant colours play with and complement the text, which is itself exquisitely designed.
The books that I have discussed are only a small selection of the holdings in the NGV’s collection. Others include publications by Thomas Bewick, William Morris at the Kelmscott Press and twentieth-century artists. However, I must save some books for future presentations. I would like to thank Robert Heather and his staff at Artspace Mackay for asking me participate in this forum.
NGV publications which may be of interest:

Cathy Leahy et al., Prints and Drawings in the International Collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, 2003

Kirsty Grant et al., On Paper: Australian Prints and Drawings in the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, 2003

Alisa Bunbury, From Paris with Love: The Graphic Arts in France 1880s-1950s, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Victoria, 2004

Irena Zdanowicz (ed.), Albrecht Dürer in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Victoria, 1994

Martin Butlin and Ted Gott, William Blake in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria, 1989

Alisa Bunbury has been Curator in the Prints and Drawings Department of the National Gallery of Victoria since 2002. Prior to this she was Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Alisa was Harold Wright Scholar at the British Museum in 1998; in the same year she completed her M.A. at the University of Melbourne. Her most recent exhibition was From Paris with Love: The Graphic Arts in France 1890s - 1850s (NGV International 2004).