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.
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.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Albert Robida’s Vieux Paris
• The End of Books, 1894
• Le Vingtième Siècle by Albert Robida
• La Vie Électrique by Albert Robida