Beschreibung:

REDON, Odilon, illustrator -- Iwan GILKIN. La damnation de l'artiste . Brussels: Edmond Deman, 1890.
REDON, Odilon, illustrator -- Iwan GILKIN. La damnation de l'artiste . Brussels: Edmond Deman, 1890. 4 o (260 x 184 mm). Lithographic frontispiece by Redon (dampstained in upper gutter margin). (Some offsetting of frontispiece onto title.) Provenance : Lucien Solvay (b. 1851), publisher (presentation inscription from the author); acquired from Weyhe, 1954. LIMITED EDITION, number 147 of 140 copies on Holland. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER TO LUCIEN SOLVAY on the half-title: "À Lucien Solvay l'editeur E. Denan bien cordialment Iwan Gilkin." And with a 3-page autograph letter signed, 18 February 1898, by Gilkin to Solvay laid-in. Gilkin was a fervent disciple of Baudelaire. His anguished verse and philosophical pessimism was an important source for some of Redon's most important imagery. Like Emile Verhaeren, Gilkin was an early champion of Redon's art, ensuring that the artist was better understood by the Belgian avant garde than in Paris. "For his frontispiece to this work by Gilkin, Redon employs many of the images frequently found in his drawings: the winged head, the primitive idol, the all-knowing eye, and the poet's lyre. He suggests a sense of damnation through scattering these objects across a vast void, watched over by the eye" (Arts Council, French Symbolist Painters , 293). A fine presentation copy. Mellerio 104.