(LIVRE D'ARTISTE). MONNIER, Antoine. Eaux-Fortes et Rêves Creux.

With Fantastically Macabre Etchings

(LIVRE D'ARTISTE). MONNIER, Antoine. Eaux-Fortes et Rêves Creux. Sonnets Excentriques et Poëms Étranges. (Paris: Librairie Léon Willem, 1873) [iv], 84, [4] pp. (256 x 180 mm.) One of 30 copies on Chine (from a total edition of 350). Quarter red cloth over marbled paper boards. With 20 engraved plates by the author.  Binding with light soiling and toning, chipping to spine label, rubbed corners, and other light wear; endleaves browned, minimal scattered foxing, one leaf with small open tear on fore edge, but contents clean and bright.

An early "livre d'artiste" by a remarkable but largely overlooked artist and poet, one of just 30 copies printed on Chine.

This haunting collection of "Etchings and Empty Dreams" by a true poète maudit is a darkly imaginative exploration of the grotesque and uncanny. The poems include such works as "Le Bazar," which imagines an immense market with Lucifer at the auction block, selling bodies and buying souls; another seeks to know the innermost thoughts of one of the stone gargoyles spending eternity at Nôtre Dame de Paris. In the manner of William Blake, Monnier pairs his poetry with his own artwork. Like his verse, the images here plunge into the darker facets of human emotion and imagination, incorporating dreamlike scenarios, demonic visages, and macabre eroticism.

Antoine Monnier (b. 1846) was associated with the Symbolist and Decadent movements in France, and was a particular admirer of the work of artists Charles Méyron and Felicien Rops. Though there is little in the way of biographical information about Monnier, we know that he was fairly prolific, publishing several more limited edition livres d'artistes during his lifetime.

Further reading: Hubert, "Antoine Monnier disciple de Baudelaire et Méyron," in "Nineteenth-Century French Studies," Vol. 44, No. 1/2 (Fall-Winter 2015-2016), pp. 111-127. (1076)