Ibels (Henri-Gabriel) - Lot 47

Ibels (Henri-Gabriel) Ɵ Robert Macaire's Centenary. Unpublished model with original compositions. Circa 1899-1920 (32 x 24.2 cm folder with leaves of various sizes), in folder. Protective box by Devauchelle. Set of unpublished original compositions by the founder of the Nabis with Bonnard, Sérusier, Denis and Ranson, comprising some 50 documents including numerous original drawings in black and in color, with engraving projects and handwritten text, for a volume that never saw the light of day. 40 drawings, sketches and draft engravings with retouching in black and color, most of them signed, produced over several years in anticipation of the centenary of Robert Macaire's character, accompanied by 15 pages of autograph text describing the project. L'Auberge des Adrets was first performed in 1823, but it was not until 1832 that the show was a success, thanks to the performance of actor Frédéric Lemaître, who transformed the dark drama created by Benjamin Antier into a comedy, much to the delight of the audience. The play was subsequently revived in 1835 under the name of its hero Robert Macaire, an unscrupulous but kind-hearted bandit. The success of the play was not to be denied, and numerous variants were produced, becoming a source of inspiration for painters, the most famous series of Robert Macaire prints being those by Honoré Daumier (in Le Charivari, 1836-1838). Henri-Gabriel Ibels (1867-1936) was one of the founders of the Nabis group, along with his Académie Julian comrades Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Paul-Élie Ranson, exhibiting at the founding Le Barc de Bouteville exhibition in 1891. He shared the aesthetic research influenced by Paul Gauguin, Japanese artists and primitive painters. Adopting Gauguin's circled line drawing, he later distanced himself from the mystical orientation of the Nabis, and befriended Toulouse-Lautrec. A caricaturist and lithographer like Toulouse-Lautrec, he was also a Dreyfusist writer with anarchist tendencies, earning him the nickname Nabi journaliste. Pictorially, he expressed himself notably through posters, of which, along with Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, he was one of the great innovators. In 1891, Félix Fénéon wrote: "Circumscribed by strong lines, the brushwork of M. H.-G. Ibels volutes in a Van Gogh-like sense of form". Provenance: Private collection.