The Célestin Nanteuil Collection
of Paul Gavault & Nathan Chaïkin
This major collection of 94 items consists of a massive, lavishly produced, DIY folio of over 80 lithograph reproductions of an independent Nanteuil archive assembled in the early 20th Century by the playwright and theatre manager Paul Gavault and an accompanying monograph; this is the personal copy of its editor/publisher, the Swiss concert violinist Nathan Chaïkin, and is accompanied by ten letters between him and his allies in the project, and three clippings and transcriptions of relevant articles. Its addition to the Revenant Archive links together Célestin Nanteuil, the groundbreaking but now forgotten Romanticist printmaker, with three subsequent generations of archivist-historians who have championed his memory and work. It seems that only three copies of this folio are publicly available in the United States, two listed on WorldCat and the other at Princeton.
In inclusion of this collection of museum-quality re-pressings, the Revenant Archive holds many first and early editions of Nanteuil's work; see Prints, Illustration, and Monographs.
A survey of the collection's significance and history will be followed first by a catalogue of Chaïkin's correspondence, then that of the included articles and clippings, and finally the catalogue of the folio itself.
The links of the inter-generational chain initiated around 1830 are manifest here:
#1 – Célestin Nanteuil: Avant-Garde Lithographer
Célestin
Nanteuil was a co-founder of the seminal avant-garde collective known
successively as the Petit-Cénacle, the Jeunes-France, and the Bouzingo
(1829-34). One of the key figures in underground Romanticism, and
particularly of the subcurrent of Medievalist Romanticism, Nanteuil
exercised an extremely important, though forgotten, influence on the
direction of 19th Century illustration, lithography, and cartooning.
While French Romanticist art is now overwhelmingly identified with the
thick brushwork, savage colour, and dynamic composition, Nanteuil
represented a completely different version of graphic Romanticism which
began to flourish briefly under his influence in the 1830s and '40s, and
then disappeared. This other Romanticism was rooted in Nanteuil's early
experimental re-visioning of Medieval aesthetics, in which design took
precedence over illusionistic modeling, the picture plane flattened and
segmented, architecturally designed, broken into enclaves and tableaux
linked thematically or narratively, integrated with text and sometimes
even musical notation. His lithography was more constrained by
commercial necessity (most were commissions) than his earlier etchings,
but many of these experimental elements remain visible, and were passed
on by Nanteuil to countless lithographers in his work. Despite his
influence, Nanteuil has been almost entirely effaced in art history in
the century and a half since his death, his legacy maintained by only a
few persistently dedicated critics, historians and collectors in each
generation – Champfleury, Charles Monselet, Aristide Marie, Paul
Gavault, Nathan Chaïkin, Olchar Lindsann . . .
#2 – Paul Gavault: Theatre-maker & Collector
Paul
Gavault, who was seven years old when Nanteuil died, was a successful
playwright and managed several Parisian theatres throughout his career,
including the prestigious Odéon. He was also a passionate collector of
Romanticist illustration and lithography, and amassed a large archive
not only of Nanteuil's prints, but also of more than 80 of the original
sketches and drawings from which they were derived. Upon his death, a
large portion of his library was bought by the historian of Romanticism Aristide Marie, who drew upon it when writing the only full-length biography and monograph of the artist (also represented in this archive, along with his books on Louis Boulanger and Henri Monnier)
#3 – Nathan Chaïkin: Musician & Art Historian
Nathan
Chaïkin was Swiss violin virtuoso, whose family had been friends with
the avant-garde composer Honegger, and who premiered works for the
latter and Paul Hindemeth and worked personally with Stravinsky on his
production of the latter's own The Rake's Progress. Chaïkin was
also a self-taught art historian, specializing in Japanese prints and,
most saliently for us here, a passionate advocate of Célestin Nanteuil's
legacy. He pointed Nanteuil's influence (often personal as well as
aesthetic) on most of the major developers of french cartooning as well
as the related Realist movement: Daumier, Nadar, Bertall, Doré, et. al,
as well as his transmission of Goya's visual idioms into French
lithography.
Devoting
a significant part of his intellectual work to researching and
promoting Nanteuil's work, Chaïkin developed an international network of
archivists, curators, collectors, and DIY researchers. At some point in
the early 1980s he "re-discovered" and acquired Gavault's
long-forgotten archive, still intact. (It is unclear where the
collection now resides; it may be in the possession of a private
collector who wanted to remain anonymous.) He decided to manifest his
work with Nanteuil into a massive, self-published but lavishly produced
set of lithographic reproductions, pairing each of the sketches and
drawings in Gavault's archive with the finished piece. To do so he
activated his research network, filling gaps in the Gavault collection
and amassing bibliographic and other information on Nanteuil – a process
reflected in the ten original letters of Chaïkin's included in the
collection. The result of his labour is the hard-bound folio of 81
unbound lithographs, each reproducing both the sketch and final product
of a Nanteuil print, which forms the bulk of this collection.
#4 – Olchar E. Lindsann: Writer, Historian & Archivist
The
copy of Chaïkin's folio held by the Revenant Archive was Chaïkin's
personal copy, and was (not surprisingly) kept in near-pristine
condition. Tipped into it are his relics of of the project's project and
completion: 10 letters to and from correspondents regarding the
project, and 3 clippings and transcriptions of reviews and articles
about his archival work.
This
collection includes only reproductions of lithographs, and only pieces
originally owned by Gavault (in drawn and/or printed form), and may also
reflect Chaïkin's taste in selection; it thus represents only a part of
Nanteuil's full range in terms of media, content, and aesthetic
approach. The Revenant Archive also contains over a dozen of Nanteuil's
other prints (both etchings and engravings) and illustrated books. The archive's publishing imprint Revenant Editions (part of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press) has published Nanteuil's work in Issues 2 and 3 of its periodical Rêvenance, in the Liberté histoico-anthology, as frontispieces and endpieces to other chapbooks, and has issued an absurdist anti-biographical zine about him. A (much less deluxe and ambitious, but also much more affordable) folio of reproductions of Nanteuil's work is planned for 2019 or '20.
Catalogue & Images of the Collection
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