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Manuel Robbe
 

See below for more information on the artist.

Selection of Works:

Rose rouge (Bibliothèque Nationale
Supplement 36)
Color aquatint & etching, 1906.

Signed lower right.

Image: 49.6 x 35 cm.
Sheet (trimmed): 57 x 37.8 cm.

Lovely impression with fresh colors,
in good condition apart from two
skillfully repaired horizontal tears
extending c. 1.6 & 0.7 cm. from right
margin edge. Extremely rare.

$3500
[click on image to see larger]
 
La Place Clichy (B.N. 44)
Color aquatint & etching, 1911.

Signed lower right image.

Image: 58.4 x 36.3 cm.
Sheet: 65.6 x 50.6 cm.

Fine impression with vibrant
colors, in good condition.

$3500

 
Le Nouveau morceau de musique
(B.N. 25)
Color aquatint & etching, 1903.

Signed, numbered from ed/65.

Image: 41.3 x 28.7 cm.
Sheet: 54.7 x 41 cm.

$3500
[click on image to see larger]
 
Le Divan
Black ink with white gouache
highlights & traces of red crayon
under-drawing, c. 1900.

Drawing for the print of the
same title (B.N. 2)

Signed lower left.

Image: 32.5 x 31 cm.
Sheet: 34 x 33.1 cm.

Some light-staining at sheet edges,
hinge remains top edge verso.

$5500
[click on image to see larger]
 

The prints of Manuel Robbe are valued for their wide-ranging palette and an imagery whose familiarity is often transcended by reportorial detail. Robbe's depictions of daily life -- particularly of women shown in artists' studios, en promenade with a companion or child, or in intimate rendezvous -- make him a leading chronicler of Belle Epoque society.

Born in Paris in 1872, Robbe produced his strongest work in the two decades immediately before and after 1900. Guided by the renowned printer Eugène Delâtre he mastered the intricacies of etching and aquatint, exhibiting by 1898 in the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Robbe soon became a leading artist of the celebrated Parisian publisher Edmond Sagot, who promoted him along with the young Jacques Villon. While Villon's work shows more the influence of late 19th century "japonisme", there is a notable similarity in their subject matter and aquatint technique.

Active in experimental printmaking methods, Robbe was an innovator of the à la poupée process of printing many colors from a single plate: colors are painted directly onto the plate before printing, giving each impression the appearance of a monoprint with uniquely varied coloring. Robbe's "painterly" aproach to printmaking, with its echoes of impressionism, is perfectly suited to the qualities of à la poupée aquatint.

Robbe produced over 200 aquatints and drypoints, as well as posters promoting bicycles and corsets. His work was widely admired, earning him invitations to exhibit at numerous Salons of the day and, in 1900, a Bronze Medal at the Exposition Universelle, Paris.


 
 
 
P.O. Box 247 Croton, NY 10520