Fêtes Galantes.

Fêtes Galantes.

Paris:

Charles Meunier,

1903

The binder of this sumptuous book, Grégoire Guimpel Levitzky (1885-1969), was a native of Odessa, where he mastered his trade; he eventually moved to Paris, first working under the binder Hippolyte Prouté (upon whom the bibliophile Octave Uzanne lavished words of praise in La reliure moderne artistique et fantaisiste), before establishing his own bindery at 22 rue de l’Odéon in 1910, attracting an international clientele that included King Albert I of Belgium and Alexander I of Serbia. Although capable of more boldly avant-garde designs, Levitzky appropriately opted for a pastiche of the eighteenth-century manner to embellish this edition of Verlaine’s Fêtes Galantes, illustrated with Watteau-esque semi-erotic pastoral scenes by the painter Alcide Théophile Robaudi. Yet amid the rococo ornamentation of the pink-and-grey mosaics on the boards and doublures, a decidedly modern flourish emerges in the lushly painted—almost ‘Fauvist’—silk flyleaves.

From the Collection of Pat Snidvongs

Paul Verlaine.

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