"Joueuses d'osselets" - Lithographie originale sur Chine - L'Estampe Moderne

Rare original lithograph, executed by Paul Leroy for L'Estampe Moderne, series number 16 published in August 1898.
One of 50 deluxe proofs printed on wide-margined China, artist's signature in the plate, publisher's dry stamp representing a child's profile in lower margin, mounted on a sheet of laid paper with on the verso the numbered stamp of the deluxe printing, pale marginal foxing.
Lithograph inspired by an extract from the Contes persans by Rifat Oktay.
Magnificent French monthly publication edited between May 1897 and April 1899, L'Estampe Moderne consists of original chromolithographs which, unlike other magazines 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 19th century: Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Pre-Raphaelites, Orientalists and Belle Époque. Each issue of four prints was printed in 2,000 copies sold at 3.50F and 100 on Japan paper offered at 10F. Henri Piazza also planned a confidential deluxe printing: 50 copies on wide-margined Japan and 50 in black on China at the considerable price of 30F.
This print of fine format is superbly printed on one of the most prestigious papers: China. "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).
French collectors' interest 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 displayed in the streets of the capital, then became an art object and its ephemeral medium became precious and destined for preservation.
Piazza decided to remove the poster from its advertising purpose 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.
Fine copy in the Orientalist style.