Albert Robida’s Contes Drolatiques

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From Doré (see last week’s post) to Robida, and a set of drawings I hadn’t seen before. Albert Robida is best known today for the illustrations from his books which present a humorous look at life in the future. But he was also a working artist, and enough of an expert on medieval French architecture to oversee the recreation of Old Paris that filled a bank of the Seine for the Exposition Universelle of 1900.

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Robida’s architectural interest is to the fore in many of his illustrations for Balzac’s droll tales; where Doré often renders buildings as blurred silhouettes, Robida offers authentic detail. He’s also a match for Doré when it comes to comic grotesquery, as these stories demand, while adding anthropomorphic touches of his own.

As before, this is a small selection from a large quantity of illustrations. This time the book is in two volumes which may be browsed here and here.

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