Eugène Grasset

The painter, illustrator, sculptor and art theoretician, Eugène Grasset, exercised a decisive influence on the development of Art Nouveau in arts and crafts as well as in poster and print art. Following his architectural studies in Zurich under Gottfried Semper, he trained himself as a draughtsman – from 1871 in Paris – and turned his attention to Japanese art. Active initially as an interior decorator and illustrator, he achieved his first major successes with posters, some of which were commissioned by Sarah Bernhardt. At the same time he undertook extensive teaching work at several private and state schools and wrote works on the theory of art.

This delightful study sheet is a preliminary drawing for the lithograph Méditation, which was issued in 1897 as the first sheet in the series of Dix estampes décoratives (Caractères de femmes, fleurs emblematiques) by the publisher Gustave Malherbe and subsequently exhibited in Brussels and Zurich and at the Viennese Secession. A typical element in Grasset’s oeuvre, these sheets feature ten stylised female figures, each of which embodies a state of mind or a situation, accompanied by symbolic plants - the titles of the other sheets are Extravagance, Bonne nouvelle, Inquiétude, Danger, Froideur, Coquetterie, Anxieté, Tentation and Jalousie. The series reflects aspects of the image of women during the fin de siècle, which was characterized by such notions as the femme fatale, the femme fragile and the femme nouveau, seen against the backdrop of increasing female autonomy and the ideas emerging from early psychological research. This brilliantly drawn sheet visualizes the development of the artist’s ideas, ranging from the model-based portrait study to the stylised, well-defined, two-dimensional depiction of the lithograph. The dreamy portrait of a girl in the upper left margin, which is drawn with great accuracy and supreme delicacy, lends the work a special charm.

9.500 €