L'Estampe originale

L'Estampe originale was a French periodical publishing portfolios of original prints in a limited edition of 100 for subscribers.

It produced nine issues quarterly between 1893 and 1895, containing a total of 95 original prints by a very distinguished group of 74 artists,[1] including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Whistler, Paul Signac, Odilon Redon, Rodin, Henri Fantin-Latour, Félix Bracquemond, Félicien Rops and Puvis de Chavannes.

[2] Commentators at the time and subsequently have unanimously praised the success of the publisher, André Marty, in collecting a stellar group of artists, and in many cases getting them to produce some of their finest prints.

After the Etching Revival beginning in the 1850s, France saw another wave of productivity in printmaking in the 1890s, with a great variety of techniques, subjects, and styles.

[16] The revived L'Estampe originale was published by the otherwise obscure, but evidently well-connected, figure of André Marty, about whom little is known.

He published a number of books, mostly on history, but including one on printmaking in 1906, and became director of the weekly Journal des Artistes (of 17, Rue de Rome) in 1893, but left in 1894, taking L'Estampe originale with him.

[20] The first album was promised for 30 March 1893; the initial subscription price was 150 francs for a year, for four issues with ten prints each.

[23] It is not known if the subscription offer sold out, but by 1898 it was reported that a complete set cost 600 francs, presumably on the art market rather than from the publishers.

[25] The 95 entries in the Stein and Karshan catalogue are made up as follows:[26] A small decorative woodcut by George Auriol, printed with the Preface in issue VI (Cat.