Georges Seurat

Artist: Georges Seurat 
Author: Jacques de Laprade 
Publisher: Les Documents d'Art, Monaco 
Date: 1945 
Condition: The first edition hardback, with a textured paper ochre cover and green embossed text, and linen spine; the covers with some noticeable sunning, the spine with a little foxing. Bookseller's label for John Tiranti Ltd to the inside front cover. Internally, very clean and unmarked, some mild tanning to the edges of the pages, but considering the publication date, the papers used around these years were very liable to this. Text in French

This book on Seurat is interesting, both as a well-illustrated volume (with both black and white and tipped-in colour plates), but also as a reminder of how hard it was in the immediate post-war years for any British-based buyer to get hold of European publications on recent art. The privations of the war efforts and disruption to manufacturing did not really place art books as a top priority, so it is actually quite amazing that as many books, some quite lavish for the time, were published at all.

The bookseller's label for John Tiranti Ltd. gives another clue, as their shops, first at Maple Street and then from 1945 at 72, Charlotte Street sold artist's materials and tools, particularly for sculpture, as well as supplying books. Often these were not volumes that the more mainstream shops stocked so for artists, students, critics and others, the Tiranti shop was a godsend as a source of literature.

The author of this book, Jacques de Laprade, wrote several books on the artists of the period, including on Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bonnard.