Henry MONNIER. Les Grisettes in hell, circa 1840. Volume in- - Lot 221

Lot 221
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Henry MONNIER. Les Grisettes in hell, circa 1840. Volume in- - Lot 221
Henry MONNIER. Les Grisettes in hell, circa 1840. Volume in-folio, 26 x 21 cm, marbled brown calf, gilt castors around the covers, spine ribbed, title coin "Antiquities of Rome" in green morocco (antique dummy binding). 21 lithographs enhanced with watercolour, various formats. At the end of the 1820s, after a stay in London, Henry Monnier returns from the English capital with a full command of lithography. This was a new reproduction process, which was to become very popular, as it was much less expensive than engraving. Monnier was then engaged in a prosperous and fertile production of lithographed vignettes enhanced with colour, with shadows marked by a few soberly distributed hatchings, but sufficient to render the relief. The humorous vignettes openly published during this period are very close to those made for his Inferno, which leads us to believe that the "free" lithographs were also conceived at this time. According to Champfleury, his biographer and friend, at this time (1829), Henry Monnier popularized the grisettes by depicting their silhouettes, morals, pleasures and loves with marked complacency. He finely observed them, ephemeral lovers with equivocal tenderness, soft resistance and quickly dried tears. The step was quickly taken to describe them in more compromising situations, to reveal their secrets, their intimacy imbued with a rather epicurean voluptuousness, and all this curiously for the attention of their consenting victims. Bibliography: Alexandre Dupouy, Les Grisettes en enfer, Astarté, 2008.
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