L’Estampe originale graphics portfolio, published in France during the mid 1890s, is widely regarded as one of the greatest collaborations in the history of printmaking. The portfolio features ninety-five works of art by seventy-four influential French, Swiss, Belgian, English and American artists. The visionary Parisian publisher André Marty issued and distributed nine quarterly installments of L’Estampe originale from March 1893 to March 1895 in a limited edition of one hundred. The first eight folios each consisted of ten prints of varying sizes, paper, and media, loose in paper wrappers; the final ninth installment included fourteen prints. In addition to the artist’s pencil or ink signature and an edition number, a unique blind stamp designed by Alexandre Charpentier was embossed on each print. This revised and full color publication of L’Estampe originale, A Catalogue Raisonné highlights the importance of color lithography during the last decade of the nineteenth century. The book includes an enlightening essay based on hundreds of mostly unpublished handwritten original and facsimile letters from the artists and from Marty’s collaborators; these are preserved at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. This vast chorus of voices allows the reader to eavesdrop directly on the past and reveals rich details of the life and working methods of André Marty—an ambitious cultural insider and artist, art historian, critic, editor, prominent and discerning publisher, private dealer and entrepreneur.
