Edouard Chimot ( French, 1880-1959) color etching

Size of the etching is 6"x 8 1/4" (with frame 13 3/4" x 15 1/2") Édouard Chimot (26 November 1880 – 7 June 1959) was a French artist, illustrator and editor whose career reached its peak in the 1920s in Paris, through the publication of fine quality art-printed books. As artist his own work occupies a characteristic place, but as editor also his role was extremely important in bringing together some of the outstanding talents of that distinctive period in French art and providing the commissions upon which the development of their work in a formal context occurred. Born in Lille, Chimot studied under Jean-Baptiste Levert and Alexis Mossa at the École des Arts décoratifs in Nice, and then under Pharaon de Winter at the Beaux-Arts, Lille. The course of his early career is unclear. He seems to have first exhibited in 1912, rather late at the age of 32, and perilously close to the outbreak of World War I, which was to cause a four-year hiatus in his career, so that Chimot was 39 by the time he really made his mark on the Paris art world. It seems possible that Chimot's late start as an artist was because he initially trained as an architect - the only evidence for this is an item on the internet from Fodor's guides, which credits Chimot with the design in 1903 of the Villa Lysis in Capri, for the dissolute Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen. He went to Paris at the start of the 20th century and tried various occupations to gain a living, while continuing to draw at night.[1] It was at this time that he bought an etching press and taught himself printmaking, in his rare free time. In the years before the War Chimot had an atelier in Montmartre, haunted by “jeunes et jolies femmes”[1] who served as his models. His first exhibition of drawings, etchings, and monotypes was in 1912; this was a success, and earned him a commission to illustrate René Baudu’s text Les Après-midi de Montmartre with etchings of what André Warnod termed his “petites filles perdus” (little lost girls). Then came the long interruption of the First World War, during which Chimot was mobilized for nearly five years. Chimot’s work in the last three decades of his life shows a sad falling-off from his pinnacle of activity and achievement in the 20s, though inevitably in an artist so richly talented there are flashes of grace and brilliance. In the last year of his life appeared a collection of 16 drawings of female nudes, Les Belles que voilà : mes modèles de Montmartre à Séville, which he regarded as a summary of his lifelong devotion to the female nude. In the 1926 issue of L’Ami du Lettré (quoted by J.-L. Bernard: III), Chimot wrote, “J’ai choisi la femme comme sujet préféré, puis unique de mon oeuvre. Je recherché un modèle au corps élegant et mince avec le côté moderne, un peu androgyne. Je fais beaucoup de dessins dans l’ambiance du texte, puis je choisis parmi eux. La gravure devient une traduction libre de mon dessin. Il me faut de deux à quatre semaines pour une gravure. Je ne fais que de l’eau-forte.” Chimot had fallen in love with Spain while researching the illustrations for his edition of La Femme et le Pantin by Pierre Louÿs in 1928. In 1938, he and his wife Loulou (19 years his junior) took refuge from the war in the holiday house they had bought in Barcelona. Hence Chimot’s publications during the Second World War all appeared in Barcelona, and mostly illustrate Spanish-language texts. Chimot died in Paris in 1959.