FLORIAN. BARBOUTAU (Pierre). Fables. - Lot 142

FLORIAN. BARBOUTAU (Pierre). Fables. Paris, Marpon & Flammarion, [1898]. 2 volumes in-8 (200x160mm), half midnight-blue banded morocco, smooth spine with titling in mosaic Japanese characters in red morocco, gilt headband, covers preserved, cardboard slipcase (Bernasconi). 24pp. + 14 double-page prints; 24pp. + 14 double-page prints; vignettes in black in the text, covers illustrated in color. Some spotting and foxing, covers soiled. A delightful Japanese venture by Editions Flammarions, commissioned by publisher and art lover Pierre Barboutau, a specialist in Japan, who brought together three artists to create the color prints: Kano Tomonobu, Kadjita Hanko & Kubota Tosui. It follows on from La Fontaine's Fables (1894). If the meeting of two apparently distant worlds may seem surprising - an 18th-century French fabulist illustrated by the prints of fin-de-siècle Japanese artists - it was the result of a dazzling intuition on Barboutau's part, who understood the porosity of the two worlds in their relationship to nature, in the use of animal drama, in the conciseness of the texts (fables / haikus) and achieved the synthesis dreamed of by the Goncourt brothers and the Burtys: Japonism and 18th-century France. The edition was printed in Tokyo by the Shueisha company presses (200 deluxe copies on Hō-shō paper are mentioned; here unjustified).