"Immortalité" - Lithographie originale sur Chine - L'Estampe Moderne

Rare original lithograph, executed by Henri Fantin-Latour for L'Estampe Moderne, series number 13 published in May 1898.
One of 50 deluxe proofs printed on China paper with wide margins, artist's signature in the plate, publisher's dry stamp representing a child's profile in the lower margin, mounted on a sheet of laid paper with the numbered stamp of the deluxe issue on the verso, pale marginal foxing.
Lithograph inspired by an extract from William Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Magnificent French monthly publication issued between May 1897 and April 1899, L'Estampe moderne consisted of original chromolithographs which, unlike other periodicals such as Les Maîtres de l'Affiche and as stipulated on the tissue guards, were created specially by each artist for the magazine. Thus 100 prints appeared in total, covering the major artistic movements of the late nineteenth century: Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Pre-Raphaelites, Orientalists and Belle Epoque. Each issue of four prints was issued in 2000 copies sold at 3.50F and 100 on Japan paper offered at 10F. Henri Piazza also planned a confidential deluxe printing: 50 copies on Japan paper with wide margins and 50 in black on China paper at the considerable price of 30F.
This print in a handsome format is superbly printed on one of the most prestigious papers: China paper. "Despite all its qualities, China paper, too inconsistent, owes its reputation not to its own beauty, but rather to its particular affinities with printing ink. Its texture, smooth and soft together, is more apt than any other to receive a fine printing. This property makes China paper sought after for printing engravings..." (Anatole France).
The interest of French collectors in artistic posters grew at the beginning of the 1890s. Octave Uzanne, to describe this fever, invented the term "affichomanie." The poster, originally popular and plastered on the streets of the capital, then became an art object and its ephemeral medium became precious and devoted to preservation.
Piazza decided to remove the poster from its advertising vocation and elevate it to the rank of a work of art in its own right, on the same level as the deluxe illustrated book. He thus composed a prestigious collection of entirely original works by the most prominent European artists of the moment: Georges de Feure, Eugène Grasset, Henri Detouche, Emile Berchmans, Louis Rhead, Gaston de Latenay, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, Gustave-Max Stevens, Charles Doudelet, Hans Christiansen, Henri Fantin-Latour, Steinlen, Ibels, Engels, Willette, Henri Meunier, Evenepoël, Bellery-Desfontaines, Charles Léandre, etc.
Handsome copy.