GAVARNI, Paul [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]

Les Lorettes

Paris: Chez Aubert, 1841. Item #06349

"Love is their business, and they drive hard bargains
They are as luxurious and idle as they are beautiful
Their lives are a tissue of deception and hypocrisy"

GAVARNI, Paul [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Les Lorettes. Paris: Chez Aubert, June 1841-December 1843.

Folio (13 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches; 342 x 248 mm.). Seventy-six (of seventy-nine) lithograph plates. All plates mounted on stubs. The three missing plates, nos. 68, 69 & 70 are supplied with the illustrations that appeared in Charivari (with text on verso). In addition there are duplicates of plate nos. 47, 48, 63 & 73 on "chine applique".

Late nineteenth century marbled boards with original maroon morocco label lettered and bordered in gilt, expertly rebacked and re-cornered with blue cloth, spine with black morocco label lettered and ruled in gilt, new endpapers.

One of the rarest of all the Gavarni albums. Originally published from June 1841-December 1843 by Aubert et Cie., with just twenty lithographs.

These lithographs represent the complete thematic cycle Gavarni created around the "lorette"—the semi-independent, fashionable demimondaine of July Monarchy Paris.

OCLC locates just one example in libraries & institutions worldwide: Clark Art Institute (MA, US).
There have been just four complete copies at auction since 1901.

A second series titled Les Lorettes Vieillies appeared in the 1860's. This second series contained thirty hand colored lithographs. OCLC locates just two copies of this rare work - they do not state that the plates are colored: University of Miami (FL, US) & Northwestern University Library (IL, US).

"Les Lorettes… This is the most masterly of Gavarni's earlier series. Ladies of the evening of a certain standing had come to be called lorettes because they often lived in the handsome new buildings of the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette. No subject could have been better suited to Gavarni's talents. Indeed, Paul de Saint Victor observed (preface to D'Après nature, II, 2) that "the lorette is for him what the actress of the Italian Comedy was for Watteau." Gavarni shows them without malice and without indulgence, exactly as they were. The grisette of Les étudiants de Paris was an ingratiating figure; not so the lorette. Love is their business, and they drive hard bargains. They are as luxurious and idle as they are beautiful. Their lives are a tissue of deception and hypocrisy. Among themselves their conversation is cynical to the point of brutality. Their men, usually twice their age, also cut a poor figure. At best these gentlemen command a wry irony which derives from their awareness of being dupes. Gavarni presents these brittle and glittering creatures with great deftness. The packed and subtle dialogue of the legends would not be amiss in a novel by Stendhal. It is difficult to select from his remarkable compositions, but one cannot overlook… no. 27, in which a lorette in her bath indulges in a rare moment of speculative conversation with a friend." (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 223-224).
Note. Gordon Ray's copy had 73 of the 79 hand colored lithographs - missing nos. 19-24).

"Lorette was a colloquialism for a new type of prostitute who was kept in relative luxury in the apartment buildings that had been constructed in the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church. Gavarni's sharp-eyed observations of Parisian society in works like these demonstrate his value as a documentarian of his times." (Bobins V, p. 64, #1541).

“In 1837 Gavarni began his connection with Le charivari, which did not conclude until 1848. In all he drew 1054 lithographs for his journal…Most of these appeared in series, some twenty-five of which extend to ten or more plates, and were afterwards published by Aubert in albums. Perhaps the best of these collections are Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment, Les étudiants de Paris, Les débardeurs, and Les lorettes; but some of the rest are of hardly inferior interest. Still further series, contributed to periodicals other than Le charivari, were also issued as albums. Baudelaire had this part of Gavarni’s work particularly in mind when he wrote…that ‘the true glory and the true mission of Gavarni and Daumier has been to complete Balzac.’ Certainly the pictures of Parisian society provided by the two artists perfectly complement each other. Daumier’s preoccupation was the working middle class with faces and figures heavily marked by life. Gavarni remained for the most part outside the humdrum bourgeois round. He preferred to show ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.’ His pretty girls and sleek young men are bent on enjoyment. They live lives of graceful dissipation, with love intrigues and balls on the one hand, and pawnbrokers’ shops and debtors’ prisons on the other…[In 1846, Gavarni] returned to Le charivari, to which he had hardly contributed since 1843. He wished to call the series that ensued Choses de Paris but was persuaded instead to employ the general title Oeuvres nouvelles. Its major albums were Carnaval; Impressions de ménage, deuxième série, thirty-nine lithographs, 1846-1847; and Baliverneries parisiens, twenty-four lithographs, 1847” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 217-218).

Armelhault & Bocher 763-841; Beraldi VII, p.51 # 107; Bobins V, 1541.

Price: $3,500.00