Un chanoine enlevé par le Diable
Limited to 350 copies (no. 271).
Signed presentation inscription: “Hommage de l'éditeur, Charles Mendel, janvier 1893.”
Mounted at front: autograph letter by Gaston Lavalley, signed and dated 28 January 1893 (on letterhead of the “Comptoir d'Édition et de Librairie, Rue d'Assas, Paris”), addressed to the baron de Claye, literary critic and bibliophile.
“[…] I have the honor of sending you, with this letter, a numbered copy of an experiment in Illustration by Photography that I have just published, which I take the liberty of submitting to your kind consideration. The plates of this modest, entirely unpretentious work are all taken from life and show what advantages Photography offers for book illustration. On this basis alone, I dare hope it will merit your attention and that you will be willing to give it a few lines in your columns…”
This work is an illustrated local legend, written by a recognized regional author (Lavalley succeeded Trébutien as curator of the library of Caen), situated between regional folk tale and iconographic essay, published by Charles Mendel, an unconventional publisher interested in modern applications of the image.
The publication is significant for its original photographic experimentation: at a time when photography was only slowly making its way into printed books, Un Chanoine enlevé par le Diable stands as a rare example of a work illustrated exclusively with staged photographs, reproduced by an innovative process.
The illustrations result from an entirely staged photographic production, in which the photographer Henri Magron, a pioneer and master of illustration by photography from life, composed veritable tableaux vivants depicting the episodes of the Norman legend told by Lavalley. Each plate becomes a dramatic reconstruction of an episode of the legend, poised between rural ethnography, religious theatricality and popular imagery.
The book was then printed using a rare process: photocollography, developed by Jules Royer in Nancy. This leading figure of French printing had founded an innovative printing house in Nancy in 1868, into which, from the 1880s onward, he introduced phototype printing and a series of refined photomechanical processes.
The process used here — known as photocollography — combines an original photograph, phototype reproduction and coloring by superimposed tints or stencils, to produce an image that is realistic yet artistically interpreted, innovative for its time and evidently very much in vogue: these are among the first photographs “in color.”
“With this first edition, Charles Mendel became a pioneer in France of illustration by photography from life. The book and its advertisements bear the notice ‘figures and architectural motifs taken from life.’ In this way, Charles Mendel promoted an innovative editorial concept containing the first direct application of photography to book illustration. The illustrations are entirely photographic, that is, made from photographic negatives taken from life, but above all through the use of photocollography, which was less retouched than the halftone process then in use” (in Lucie Goujard, L’illustration des œuvres littéraires par la « photographie d’après nature » en France, thesis, Université de Lille, 2005).
From the library of the baron de Claye (bookplate).