Coloured-print making is one of the activities in which popular art of Lorraine has found its most vigorous expression since the end of the 17th century.
But who associates today spontaneously the pictures of Epinal with Lorraine?
Laurie Holzer |
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european institute of cultural routes |
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| Laurie Holzer |
| 02 March 2010 |
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| ... Nevertheless the town of Epinal belongs really to Lorraine! |
If the main towns of Lorraine had their own coloured-print workshop (Metz, Nancy, Pont-à-Mousson, Lunéville...), only the pictures printed in Epinal, in the Vosges, became world-famous. They depicted a variety of scenes in a realistic but so unmistakable manner, that the term "Pictures of Epinal" has passed into the language and is now used to refer to any form of a stereotypical representation.
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A family business
In the middle of the 18th century, Epinal had a lot of paper printmakers : Jean-Charles Didier made dominoes, Claude Dumoulin was printer, bookseller and he fashioned playing cards, like Nicolas Pellerin, who was bookseller too, but also binder and innkeeper. Around 1779, his son Jean-Claude, who was also clockmaker, had the idea of reproducing the clock faces on paper...He got a printer patent in 1800 and could add texts to the pictures, which were at the beginning engraved and drawn by himself. Then he hired engravers. In 1814, his catalogue had 164 titles, mainly pictures of popular saints, of historical events and characters, of soldiers and also fairy tales illustrations... In 1822, JC Pellerin passed his workshop on to his son-in-law Valet and to his son Nicolas. The business, which had 45 workers in 1829, employed 91 persons, including 17 children, in 1842.
A growing reputation
Production increased : if the titles remained mainly religious, they slowly handed over their place to topical subjects and propaganda. The Pellerins' and their workers were admirers of Napoléon and they published between 1830 and 1842 more than 59 pictures on Napoléon's epic. These titles answered to the demand of a nostalgic population and made the fame of the workshop. In 1852, Pellerins' introduced lithography: they hired real drawers, the line became more refined and less archaic. Pictures in vignettes supplanted definitively pictures with an unique subject.
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Traditionnal French clothes
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The Ogre in Tom Thumbs
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The pictures' battle
In 1860, consequent on dissenssions, the "New Imagerie d'Epinal" (Imagerie means coloured-print workshop in French) is created by Charles Pinot and the two workshops started a real "pictures' battle", which ended 1888 with the buying out of Pinot by the Pellerins'.
The Pellerins' developped then the pictures for children : theatre, short stories and fairy tales' pictures in vignettes around 1842, constructions and 3D pictures to cut out aroubd 1862. This new orientation became a strength and challenged the other coloured-print workshops, which started slowly to disappear for politic or economic reasons.
The decline in the 20th century
Around 1880, Charles Pellerin signed a contract with Gaston Lucq, alias Glucq, in order to create a series of pictures with an encyclopedic aim and also advertising pictures. Another later series, known as the "bearing the arms of Epinal" series, had a great success until 1914 for its more innovative aesthetic and its humouristic, not too moralistic any longer, tone.
But the successive wars, the rapid expansion of means of communication, the new print and representation technics, made the workshop, for which advertising became the main production, vulnerable. The last traditionnal production illustrated the first World War.
After the two World Wars, in spite of modernization attempts, the Imagerie collapsed and put its patrimony up for auction. The municipality of Epinal bought a part of the engraved woods and machines.
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| SOME TRADITIONNAL PICTURES |
Wolf
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Proverbs
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| THE 1980'S AND THE REBIRTH OF THE IMAGERIE D'EPINAL |
In 1984, a group of local shareholders decided to take on the workshop, in order to bring back to life an heritage, which means a lot to the inhabitants of Epinal, but also to generations of children, for which these popular pictures evocate the reward they received for their good behaviour. With the help of the municipality, which bought and restored the building, the Imagerie d'Epinal S.A published again the pictures that made its fame. Since 1989, with a wise and careful management which preserves the specific character of the company with the stencil colour, the Imagerie d'Epinal adapts its realisations to the most modern print technics. It finds its roots back in the graphic and artistic expression of its time, starting a collaboration with Antonio Gacia, a first artist, who knows how to adapt his talent to the requirements of the Imagerie.
Like Antonio Gacia, other artists are now working with the Imagerie d'Epinal : Isabel Yung, Jean-Paul Marchal, Clair Arthur, Guillaume Roussel, Olivier Claudon, Patrick France, Sidonie Hollard... all of them expand the collection of the Pictures of Epinal with their own creations.
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Variations about Puss in Boots
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From left to right: Puss in Boots in the traditionnal version, Puss in Boots by Isabel Yung, Puss in Boots by Jean-Paul Marchal, Puss in Boots by Olivier Claudon, Little Puss in Boots by Guillaume Roussel
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| TWO CREATIONS BY ANTONIO GACIA |
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Dali, by Antonio Gacia
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The European Union of 25 countries, by Antonio Gacia
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| WHAT ABOUT VISITING THE IMAGERIE OF EPINAL ? |
In its authentic premises, you will discover all the technics that made the hours of fame of the Imagerie of Epinal :
- the wood engraving, or xylography, presents engraved woods, which show the talent and great deal of precision of the artists who carved pear tree wood with their gouges or penknives.
- the Gutenberg presses, which were named after the famous inventor of the individual character (or letter punches), will allow you to understand the work of the presser who printed the picture. The typographic exhibition will show you the different types of characters used in the Imagerie.
- a colourist will make you discover the graceful movement of the silk brush laying the tint over, in order to colour the picture. A stencil for each colour, from the lightest to the thickest. Then, you will see the famous aquatype which allow to colour 300 pictures in an hour!
- on the first floor, after having taken the stairway built of stone, you will discover lithography, with the work of the stone - that was grained in order to become smooth-, the wood desks of the drawers - who reproduced on the stone the picture of the artist -, and its two huge machines still in operation.
- going downstairs, you will overhang the print workshops before entering the Pinot Gallery. It is the shop window of the concern. In a clear and well-ordered presentation, you will encounter more than 200 years of history, artists, technics and events that show the wealth of the print-coloured heritage of the place. But rather than a long drawn-out tale, a visit is a must. Don't forget to have a look on the lithographic stones, they testify of this prolific past. A film theater will propose you a movie, recounting the life of the Imagerie.
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The aquatype
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The Pinot Gallery
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During the Pictures Festivals, which takes place each year on Easter Day, the characters of the Imagerie let the 200-year-old technics live again before your very eyes: wood engraving, stencil colour, drawing on stone, photoengraving... !
The Pictures Festival is above all a popular meeting, where passionate actors and coloured-prints lovers are mixed. Proposing several activities, the Imagerie open its doors and comes in front of you in order to present its musical, singsong and colourful parade at the covered market of Epinal. The artists, actors of the event, invite you to interact and offer dedications.
At the bend of a colonnade, Harlequin becomes a presser on the Gutenberg machine, Columbine illuminates the picture with the colour brush. This restless Pierrot explains you the mysterious functionnement of the famous "horned animal", the litho press which prints the black line or even better which prints through the colour stone: the chromolithography.
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The Pictures Festival 2004, by Antonio Gacia
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The Pictures Festival
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Inaugurated in May 2003, the City of the Picture groups together the Imagerie d'Epinal, private establishment, and the Museum of the Picture, public building. The municipality of Epinal, by building the Museum, has created a real contemporary case for its exceptionnal collection of 23 000 pictures and engraved woods. It confirms its wish of innovation and settles down its national and international fame by celebrating the picture in its whole historical and artistic dimension.
The differents rooms of the Museum
With its definitively contemporary architecture, the new building is the counterpart of the historical building of the Imagerie. All in all, more than 600 square meters are devoted to the so-called popular picture until the today pictures which result from them. Leaning on a collection of more than 23 000 images from French and Foreign coloured-print workshops, the Museum wants to become the first research centre on picture.
On the first floor, the permanent exhibition room presents on 400 square meters a set of themes explaining the origins of ancient and contemporary pictures, their continuity, their interpretations, their functions and their diffusion.
The characteristics of the European coloured-print workshops can be appreciated on a stylistic but also in a technical point of view, popular iconography shows its references and its evolution to other media, like books, comic-strips or advertising. The permanent exhibition gives in so far to the visitors the keys to understand the multiple functions of the pictures.
The two temporary exhibitions rooms with a surface of 200 square meters, are exploring all the declinations, the relations between picture and other subjects through thematic or monographic exhibitions. Thanks to contemporary art exhibitions, they create links with the today's pictures. Concerts and conferences complete the cultural and open-place vocation of the museum.
A passage between the museum and the workshop of the Imagerie invites the visitors to discover the ancient technics of popular picture and the story of the concern. Founded in the 18th century, it knew how to continue its production and how to develop it with artists, printing again at the same time the ancient pictures which can be bought at the Imagerie shop.
Finally, in the Northern building, a documentation centre keeps numerous books and works. It is equiped with a consultation terminal, which proposes to searchers, students and to the public the opportunity to ameliorate their knowledge in the picture domain. A room for activities and a multimedia room permit the organisation of several animations for children and adults, based on the interpretation of pictures and their representation codes.
The Museum and contemporary art
If the Museum collections own mainly popular pictures printed in the 18th and 19th centuries, the question of the picture today is one of its preoccupations. It doesn't consist only in showing or conserving the multiple published prints, but it aims also to find links between the collections and the contemporary pictures. And the links between the Museum and contemporary art come within this issue, within this exploration. As the observer of a society and its productions, the Museum proposes to artists, like Dorothéé Selz or Jacqueline Salmon, to show their work. These both exhibitions offered a "variation" on the theme of pictures and the history of the town. With the attentive collaboration of the guest artists, they linked past and present through contemporary and ancient pictures, in a temporal and voluntarily flowing view on artistic creation.
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Museum of Picture (photo by B.Barbier)
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Thanks to Ms Aurélie Cuny, cultural mediator of the Museum of Picture, Mrs Christel Rigolot and the team of the Regional Tourist Board (CRT) of Lorraine, Mr Eric Staub, chairman and managing director of the Imagerie d'Epinal.
The article has been written thanks to the press kit sent by the Museum of Picture, the website of the Imagerie d'Epinal and the touristic brochures of the CRT Lorraine.
The illustrations taken from the website of the Imagerie d'Epinal are reproduced with the courtesy autorisation of Mister Eric Staub, the pictures of the Tom Thumb's Ogre and the Wolf has been given by the Museum of Picture and the photo of the Museum by B.Barbier has been sent by the CRT Lorraine.
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