Search

A rare Brussels piracy of a popular gothic and melodramatic novel, printed entirely on bright green paper. The book had first appeared in Paris the same year and seems to have been swiftly pirated by more than one Belgian printer. WorldCat locates no other copy with this Wahlens imprint, and thus probably no other copy on this striking paper. While green paper used in wrappers and bindings is widely recorded in this period (as well as the more common emerald green cloth used in ‘poison’ bindings) the use of a complete stock of green paper for the text block is rare. It remains to be determined whether such stocks are arsenical or coloured with heavy metal derivatives. Now wash your hands.

Thadéus le Ressuscité was a collaborative novel between Masson and Luchet, telling the story of a man condemned to death during the Terror who survived to encounter his accusers and betrayers in the post-Revolutionary period. It combines gothic melodrama with historical morality and allegory.

One of the strangest memorials of the Great War and one of the best known works by the nuns of Maredret, celebrated revivalists of the medieval art of manuscript illumination. The pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier archbishop of Malines/Mechelen was addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese in the early months of the Great War, when Belgium was facing the terrible consequences of a German occupation, to encourage courage, fortitude and patriotic duty. Its text was taken by the two most talented nuns of the abbey of Maredret (near Namur), Agnès Desclée and Marie-Madeleine Kerger, and transcribed and illuminated under the most terrifying circumstances. The sheets were at one point hidden in a double-bottomed pig trough to evade discovery during the German occupation. The illumination records in medieval idiom key episodes of Belgium’s trials between 1914 and 191 — including the devastation of Aarschot, Dinant and Tamines, the execution of civilians, the burning of the halls and library of the University of Louvain as well as relief received from the United States. The medieval figures and scenes have subtle (even humorous) modernisations - notably the addition of modern Belgian, British and American flags, while the monstrous Krupp guns are rendered as canons. In each plate, the scenes are explained with brief captions on the tissue guards.

The manuscript was reproduced after the war and issued in this 1921 edition, the prefatory text in either French or English (this copy in French) and sent to supporters around the world, notably in the United States. This copy is one of the 750 numbered copies on Hollande (after 500 on Japon).

J.P. Morgan in New York was to become one of the nuns’ most effective patrons in the years following the war, notably purchasing their Messe pour les Époux made in 1915 in 1921. He had been introduced to the abbey by the head of the British Museum, Frederic George Kenyon via Belle da Costa Greene. The original manuscript of the pastoral letter remains at Maredret (classified a national ‘trésor’ in 2015), while the British Library holds a manuscript copy of a single page (Add MS 40082). The work of the Maredret nuns and the genesis of this book is described by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Un Art très monastique. L’atelier des bénédictines de Maredret de 1893 à 1940] in Thomas Coomans and Jan de Maeyer (eds.) Renaissance de l'enluminure médiévale. Manuscrits et enluminures belges du XIXe siècle et leur contexte européen. Leuven University Press, Leuven 2007, pp. 295-309.

First edition. A remarkable and delightful book by a member of the Belgian artistic avant-garde, published while in exile in London during the Great War. Edgard Tijtgat (1879-1957) attained something of a cult status among artists in the early twentieth-century, known for his quiet interpretation of Fauvism. His playful, nostalgic compositions, infused with melancholy, feel (to me, at least) like a graphic counterpart to the the music of Erik Satie or the Alain-Fournier’s novel Le Grand-Meaulnes. As in Tijtgat’s illustrations for Le petit Chaperon Rouge the colour palette is limited (though adding a bold pink to the range) but in Carrousels et Baraques there is more subtlety in tone. Several different shades of blue and green appear, for example, inked to different intensities to give a gauzy effect.

This copy of Carrousels et Baraques is number 148 of 150 copies, one of 110 copies with plates on chine (after 40 hand-coloured and signed copies). contains six superb coloured woodcuts in Tijtgat’s instantly recognisable naive style, and the text reproducing the artist’s wood or linocut lettering with ornaments (it is unclear, and perhaps unlikely, that this is printed directly from the block, though the contents leaf confirms it was printed ‘sur la presse a main de l’éditeur, Cyril W Beaumont’. The illustrations are directly from boxwood cuts, printed by the artist at his ‘Imagerie de Watermael’ which must stand for his makeshift tabletop press in London rather than the village of Watermael itself, since Tijtgat was still living in London in 1919 since his flight from Belgium at the outbreak of the Great War. He printed with rollers rather than a press, and the vibrant colouring shows elements of pochoir colouring, though probably also applied with rollers to judge by the ink surfaces.

Three of the prints show Belgian processions and fairs (including a fantastic baraque or booth with musicians and conjurors) and three are British scenes: showing carousels, swingboats and traveller caravans (a familiar part of British fairgrounds until the 1970s). The artist’s introduction is a delightful meditation on the effects of exile on the emotions and imagination, with an affectionate evocations of the Belgian fairground of his youth, still subjects of his painting stacked against his wall, and the fairs of Hampstead with their elegant carousels.