“ENTRE LES PETITS MAÎTRES DE CE TEMPS”: GEORGE LEPAPE’S DESIGNS FOR THE STAGE, WITH 21 COLOR POCHOIR PLATES

LEPAPE, Georges. Costumes de Théâtre, Ballets et Divertissements. Paris: Lucien Vogel, (1920). Small folio (5 by 10 inches), 21 color plates loose as issued, including pictorial title page, housed in pictorial green and silver-gilt portfolio, original silk ties. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $3800.

First edition of Lepape’s costume and stage designs for Rip’s ballet-pantomime "Le Coup Manqué" and L’Herbier’s play "L’Enfantement du Mort," with 21 hand-colored plates by Lepape colored using the pochoir technique, applied by celebrated colorist Jean Saudé.

Georges Lepape's striking illustrations for Les Choses de Paul Poiret were a great success; he would go on to publish designs and illustrations in Parisian periodicals such as Gazette du Bon Ton, Journal des Dames et des Modes, and Modes and Manieres d'Aujourd'hui. He also produced striking designs for stage sets and costumes, highlights of which are featured in Costumes de Théâtre, Ballets et Divertissements. The present work features Lepape's designs for theatrical costumes: the first ten plates document the revue writer Rip's 1915 ballet-pantomime Le Coup Manqué, including modernist reinterpretations of Columbine, Pierrot, and Harlequin. The second ten plates are designs for fimmaker Marcel L'Herbier's 1919 play L'Enfantement du Mort, with allegorical figures presented in the gear of the Great War. Four-page Preface by Henry Bidou. Text in French.

Plates clean, coloring vivid. Slight rubbing to corners of portfolio. A lovely, near-fine copy.