[LE NOBLE, Alexandre; Henry SOMM (illustrator).] La Rapinéide, ou l’Atelier: Poème burlesco-comico-tragique en 7 chants par un ancien rapin des Ateliers Gros et Girodet.

Satire on Art Students, in a Samurai Binding

[LE NOBLE, Alexandre; Henry SOMM (illustrator).] La Rapinéide, ou l’Atelier: Poème burlesco-comico-tragique en 7 chants par un ancien rapin des Ateliers Gros et Girodet. Paris: Barraud. 1870.

8vo. Near-contemporary green half morocco, woodblock prints by Utagawa Yoshitora to boards (see below), top-edge gilt, other untrimmed, marbled endpapers, green silk place-marker; publisher’s orange wrappers illustrated by Somm bound in; pp. [4], 62; with etched title, 7 further etched plates, 7 in-text etched illustrations at start of each canto, and 10 in-text woodcuts, all by Somm; hinges cracked but holding firm, spine sunned, boards a little worn and stained with some wear to fore-edge, publisher’s wrappers a little soiled; light foxing to initial and final leaves, but overall a very good, clean copy; contemporary engraved bookplate of Alfred Piat, with his ‘Libro Liber’ poem, tipped-in at front; early twentieth-century bookplate of E. Bernstein, after the 1905 bookplate of German painter Franz Marc (1880–1916), to front pastedown; ownership inscription of George ?Berde dated 24 September 1949 in pencil to verso of front free endpaper.

First illustrated edition (second overall), no. 111 of 140 copies on grand papier de Hollande from a total edition of 502, of this mock-epic poem satirising the world of art students, this copy in a striking contemporary binding incorporating two Japanese woodblock prints by Utagawa Yoshitora.

First published in 1838 in a limited print run, according to the prefatory ‘Notices bio-bibiliographique’ of this edition, La Rapinéide is a mock-Homeric poem by the lawyer and historian Alexandre Le Noble (1800–1851). A former rapin (a mildly derogatory term for a painter’s apprentice or art student), Le Noble trained in the studios of Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835) and Anne-Louis Girodet (1767–1824). Drawing on his own experience, he satirises studio life, the struggles of artistic creation, and the chaotic antics of aspiring painters.

The present second edition is illustrated by Henry Somm (pseudonym for Françóis Clément Sommier, 1844–1907), an artist and caricaturist later associated with the bohemian milieu of Montmartre. His work and social circle bought him into contact with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), and he was closely involved with Le Chat Noir, the legendary Parisian cabaret that became a centre of avant-garde artistic life at the end of the nineteenth century.

Provenance: With the bookplate of Parisian notary and bibliophile Alfred Piat (1826–1896), bound before the sale of his library in 1898 (Catalogue de la bibliothèque de feu M. Alfred Piat, troisième partie, lot 3323: ‘pap. de Holl. […], demi-rel. mar. vert avec coins, plats, papier chinois’). Each board is covered with a woodblock print depicting a samurai, taken from Utagawa Yoshitora’s 1873 series Go fudoki eiyū den (後風土記英勇伝 [The Heroic Legend of the Later Customs and Soil]). Yoshitora (fl. 1836–1887), a pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861), was a prolific designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Outside continental Europe, OCLC finds six copies of this edition in the US (Getty, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Texas Museum of Fine Arts) and two in the UK (BL, Taylorian).

SKU: 2126846