Gustave Pellet

[1] When the family fortune disappeared in a financial crash in 1886, Pellet decided, with a part of his book collection, to open a library in the Quai Voltaire in Paris.

[6] Pellet owned the rights to the artworks of Félicien Rops, whose watercolour paintings and drawings he published in a book of a hundred plates engraved by Albert Bertrand, some in colour.

[6][8] The artworks were often erotic,[7] both Toulouse-Lautrec and before him Legrand making detailed studies of the night life of late nineteenth-century Paris.

[9] For example, the 1896 Elles ("Them") was a series of ten Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs and a frontispiece, which Pellet had printed on high quality wove paper, in a small edition of only 100; the paper was left deckle edged, and was specially watermarked "G. Pellet / T. Lautrec"; the women are mostly from Paris brothels, and they are shown relaxing, washing and dressing.

[10] Pellet published three volumes, Livre d'Heures, La Faune Parisienne, and Poèmes à l'Eau-forte (1914), illustrated by Legrand.