#939 - Une Bizarrerie Française

Une Bizarrerie Française,
an original anthology of French Illustration,
1900 to 1940

a page-by-page presentation, 310+ pages
and
optimized for ebook viewing, 320+ pages

The drawings showcase the talents of a dozen French artists who illustrated short novels during the period from 1900 to 1940. The Gallic literature that inspired the illustrations is not part of the anthology, but each series of pictures tells a story on its own.

Most of the anthology shows pictures from 18 books. Artists include Wighead, Hageby, Ernest Mossè, Del Giglio, O. Ridrik, Maurice Millière, Herric, Marilac, Jèo, Rene Giffey, E. K. (Edith Kindler?), Diana and Jim Black, who were productive during the 1930s. One of the books is illustrated with photographs. The second part of the ebooks consists of illustrated covers of earlier volumes, mostly drawn by Esbey and Selby.

The line drawings were usually printed with the text they illustrated. Pictures with colors and grays were usually sold separately as supplements to the books. About 15 percent of the pages in the two ebooks are in color.

The art collected shows varied talents and media, some more like cartoons than illustrations. Most scenes are set indoors, in hotel rooms, salons and ballrooms. Many pictures have lovely renditions of corsets, lacy lingerie, gloves, stockings and high-heeled boots or shoes, and most depict some kind of discipline scenario with a woman in charge. While some artists are more gifted than others, each image vividly describes a scene.

The collection offers a glimpse into the creative imaginations of those who preceded the American illustrators of our generations. A broad assortment that spans decades and themes, Bizarrerie serves, along with Carlo's fantasy renderings, as part of the pre-war archeology of modern fetish erotica.

The ebooks consist entirely of scans of original printed pages, made in the office of a collector in Hamburg, Germany. The pictures are presented in 18 groups, each relating to the volume illustrated. In the page-by-page ebook, the title page and cover of the book precedes each set. Each page that has a caption in the original also has the caption in the ebook.

In the optimized version, most text has been excised, including title pages and captions. Images were edited to remove blank spaces, walls, floors and furniture to obtain bigger pictures of the characters on 320+ wide ebook pages. Many scenes have repeated details and characters, enlarged beside the complete tableau or on the following page.

Bizarrerie discloses an obscure French antiquity of peculiar power, drama, and artistry. A visit to the secret past, the anthology will amuse, surprise and entertain with a style and timbre that piques nostalgia and respect.

a free sample of Une Bizarrerie Française can be found here:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/uaxws190c0.pdf

Two ebooks, one optimized, delivered by download link.