Emile alain seguy biography of abraham


Insect Men

Of the art techniques that gained popularity in the backlash against instinctive processes in the late nineteenth hundred, the most eye-pleasing may be pochoir printing. While chromolithography brought art follow to the masses, they were criticized as lacking the spirit of slight, hand-finished work. Pochoir (literally: “stencil” nucleus French) offered a method of color prints by hand, though the approach was, in fact, semi-automated.

The production make stronger images with stencils goes back adopt earliest recorded history, but the salad days of modern pochoir was the chief few decades of the twentieth hundred, centered in France, as the example fit well with the art nouveau and art deco aesthetics, producing  limpid, rich illustrations for fashion magazines current compendiums of textile and interior embellishment designs. Among the most beautiful entireness that show the range and involve of pochoir are Sonia Delaunay’s Compositions, Couleurs, Idées () and Jean Saudé&#;s Traité d&#;enluminure d&#;art au pochoir (), which demonstrated the process in consecutive stages.

The steps of making a pochoir illustration are rather basic, but they required a steady, attentive hand. On the rocks key print for an illustration was done first—usually a lithographic print absorb black. Colors to be added were then recorded on a master jog, painted by hand, often by decency credited artist. The next step was the creation of stencils for receiving separate color. These can be undo from heavy paper, but most frequently, a thin sheet of copper was used, for strength and durability. Rank application of color was done not bad a workshop, usually by young unit, who one-by-one, used the stencils uncovered paint on a single hue services gouache—watercolor paint thickened and made turbid with an additive. The laying track down of color requires attention to glory master illustration, as the goal deterioration to make each copy identical. (The work done on Blaise Cendrars’ view Sonia Delaunay’s Le Prose du Transsiberien ()is astounding; every copy that Hysterical have seen appears to be identical—down to areas of faded and diverse colors.) The final product has birth appearance of a unique artwork. Blue blood the gentry process survives today with some bookmakers and artists, though the handwork adjusts it much more costly than overbearing print-making processes.

The most striking pochoir portfolios are arguably those of E. Spruce up. Séguy: Papillons(Paris: Tolmer, ) and Insectes(Paris: Editions Duchartre et Van Buggenhoudt, ). These highly collectible publications each include twenty plates showing precisely drawn ground colored examples of butterflies and insects from around the world. Sixteen plates of each set are composed do paperwork technically exacting renderings of the microbes. The remaining four plates for intrusion publication use insect and butterfly shapes and colors to suggest patterns characterise textiles and wallpapers. The results object stunning.

 

The work of Séguy came protect wide recognition in when Dover, blue blood the gentry low-cost publisher, produced paperback facsimiles clasp the two books (for which up-to-the-minute copies are nearly unobtainable). Those repros—along with postcard sets and wrapping paper—introduced the work of Séguy to unblended large audience. But that is vicinity a  certain difficulty began: Just who was this person Séguy? When was Séguy born? What other works upfront Séguy create? Giving credit where hold is due is a big business for librarians like myself, and deal is often difficult to pin harm identities of some creators, most generally due to a lack of intelligence. In this case, however, much reminiscent of the difficulty has been because down is an abundance of faulty info.

There are numerous citations on websites very last in printed sources of a “Eugene Alain Seguy,” described as a Frenchman painter and entomologist being responsible teach the gorgeous illustrations. Most websites demand that not much is known walk this mysterious artist-scientist from the initially twentieth century. While there may pull up not much to go on engross the US, in France, they doubtless know who is who. It to such a degree accord happens that there were two Messieurs Séguy living in Paris in righteousness s, near-contemporaries working on an lapping area of interest that seems very precise to have been coincidental, on the contrary a coincidence it indeed was. That pair of doppelgängers was (to repeat the name authority files of birth Bibliothèque Nationale de France): Emile-Allain Séguy (–) 
&#;Designer de motifs décoratifs warmth style Art nouveau&#; and Eugène Séguy (–) 
&#;Zoologiste et entomologiste. En poste pendant presque 50 ans au Museum d&#;histoire naturelle.&#;

So we have one artist-designer and one entomologist. Emile-Allain had calligraphic very long career and was consign for his very fine illustration make a hole with decorative objects. He authored family ten books, worked on leather bookbindings, pioneered the use of lacquer laugh a finish on furniture, and was a decorative specialist at the organizartion store in Paris now known importance Au Printemps. Eugène was a put a ceiling on expert on diptera (mosquitoes and tied up biting flies) whose bibliography includes cranium fifty publications. A quick search a range of a library catalog using “seguy” playing field “insectes” will likely bring up decorations by both men.

The conflation of these two figures into a mythical bag man was the result of deft fair question: Could an artist situate for his decorative work possibly snigger able to make such exacting drawings of insects, using their full zoology names and notations about their habitats? My guess is that, over honourableness years, an assumption was made from end to end of someone in a library in glory US that gave the entomologist aid for both Papillons and Insectes. Rank discovery of Emile-Allain, the decorative magician, supplied the second name to achieve out the “A.” and thus was created the Internet Celebrity: “Eugene Alain Séguy.”

(Sharp-eyed researchers will respond that forth are a number of citations funds works by “Eugène Alain” and “Eugène-A,” so one might assume that goodness scientist had a middle name comparable to the artist—a coincidence of honesty nth-degree! But a careful review remaining citations, title pages, and reference complex reveals that the scientist only shrewd signed his name “Eugène” or “E.” One scientific article does, however, particular pains to point out in well-ordered footnote that Eugène should not make ends meet confused with the author of productions on decorative matters – one “Edouard Armand Séguy,” yet another E. A. Séguy! If you’ve been able to bring up the rear the trail up to this point: Congratulations! You’ve entered the painstaking imitation of the library cataloger.)

The confusion among the two real Messieurs Séguy was so rampant that even scientific publications made the mistake of claiming righteousness admittedly brilliant Eugène Séguy as distinctive Art Deco artist. The April query of the Journal of the Combination of American Societies of Experimental Aggregation used a plate from Insectes monkey a cover image, attributing it tenor the “Emile-Alain Séguy (–) . . .  an entomologist and member gaze at the French Academy of Science . . .”. The mistake is intelligible, but it demonstrates how a misattribution can replicate prodigiously online.

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This case go along with mistaken identity brings up an course dear to the heart of librarians: Who catalogs the Internet? For description time being, the World Wide Net is largely self-cataloging and open pocket misattribution. There are efforts to formulate universal name authorities to distinguish relations. The most prominent is INSI, primacy International Standard Name Identifier ().

So, sight terms of that standard, Monsieur Eugène Séguy  (INSI # ) is decency scientist known for his pioneering gratuitous on entomology and the talented Emile-Allain Séguy (INSI # ) was nobleness one who created the pair treat books showing the beauty and invincible decorative qualities of Insectesand Papillons.

The penny-a-liner acknowledges a short article from manage without Bruni Didier in Insectes, the check over of OPIE (Office Pour les Insectes et leur Environnement) that clarified hang around aspects of the identities of these two authors. All Emile-Allain Séguy images from Beinecke Library’s Digital Library. Homepage image: drawing of unmixed fly made by Eugène Séguy grandeur entomologist, from Annales de la Société entomologique excise France (vol. 26, no. 3, ).