L'Image : revue artistique et littéraire ornée de figures sur bois

One of 100 copies of the magazine printed on China paper for issues 1 to 11. The specimen issue and no. 12 are on laid paper. Our copy is complete with the spine and covers of the general binding, and the twelve illustrated covers.
First edition of the complete collection of L'image, published between 1896 and 1897.
All issues of the magazine are bound together under a half sheep binding with corners, spine with five raised bands titled in gilt, marbled paper boards. Some rubbing.
Scattered foxing and marginal tears.
Complete copy of this magazine founded by the young French corporation of wood engravers, and published by the publisher of Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs (Au pied du Sinaï, Histoires naturelles, Café-Concert).

L'Image ranks among the most handsome achievements of "Fin de Siècle" art publishing. The magazine's directors, notably the celebrated engraver Auguste Lepère, founder of the corporation, attempted to gather and promote, following the ideas of Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau, the craftsmanship of wood engraving threatened by the use of faster and lower-quality processes. This complete collection brings together the works of 106 engravers and dozens of writers, making it a work of exceptional bibliophilic and artistic quality. Its China paper in perfect state of preservation renders all the splendor and contrast of the monochrome wood engravings, as well as the cameos of ochres, vermilion reds and olive greens typical of the period. One finds the poems and short stories of Maurice Barrès, Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé, Émile Zola, framed by a variety of arabesques, leafy designs, friezes, ornamental letters and fleurons. This magazine formed indeed an ornamental collection of great richness, but above all very heterogeneous, each artist bringing a different style, and always remarkable. In the same spirit, each cover is an original work created specially for the magazine, representing Symbolist, Art Nouveau, Orientalist and "Belle Époque" movements. It is the celebrated Alfons Mucha who inaugurates the magazine and signs the first cover, published in December 1896, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who, a year later, closes the publication with a portrait of the actress Marthe Mellot.
Complete copy of the magazine L'Image, a work of erudition, refinement and aesthetics, marking the apogee of original wood engraving.