IMAGES #13 Portfolio

The centerpiece of the final issue of Images Magazine was eight gorgeous Art Nouveau plates restored from an 1899 issue of the French art magazine, Figaro Illustré. This portfolio reproduces those five-color plates (including gold), on heavy stock, presented in an illustrated and hand-numbered envelope. They appear in Images #13 but are reproduced across double-pages, i.e. across a fold. The subjects here feature beautiful women and highly ornate borders and designs. Louis Chalon, 1866-1940, was born in Paris and studied with Jules Lefevre and Boulanger. He exhibited vast classically inspired paintings in the Salons of the Societe de Artistes Francais where he was awarded Honorable Mention in 1885 and 1898, a Third Class Medal in 1891 and Honorable Mention at the Expositions Universelles of 1889 and 1900. He supplied many illustrations to the periodicals La Vie Parisienne, L'Illustration and Figaro Illustré, as well as illustrating several books, including works by Rabelais, Boccaccio, and Balzac. Chalon also worked as a goldsmith and silversmith and executed sumptuous costumes. While experimenting with wax figures in 1898 (the year these plates appeared in Figaro), he discovered the pleasures of sculpture, to which he was to devote much of the rest of his life. The first and fourth scan here show some but not all of two plates--these pictures are too big and too detailed to do them justice. So the second and third scans are details, in this case just the corner of two of the plates. The ornate, Art Nouveau detail on these is just phenomenal. Click on each one to get a larger size image. This was produced as a special Kickstarter project because of the success of the funding for Images #13. Numbers 1 to 150 were numbered and signed by the publisher, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., while #151 to 250 was exactly the same, just not signed. Hand-numbered on the envelope.