French artist Antoine Calbet (1860-1944) was the son of a landowner from Garonne. Like many artists who undertook book illustration commissions, he actually worked in multiple media in order to make a decent living: Calbet also painted portraits, genre scenes and landscapes and in addition was a draughtsman and provided decorations for theatres and restaurants around France. He had trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier under landscape painter Emile-Francois Michel and Édouard-Antoine Marsal (1845-1929), a painter of portraits and genre scenes.
Subsequently, in Paris at the National School of Fine Arts, he studied under Alexandre Cabanel (1823-89), the famed mythical, biblical and historical painter. Cabanel’s work frequently incorporated young women, more or less clothed, as in his images of mythical females such as Venus, Pandora, Echo, Psyche and Phaedra, Shakespearian characters like Desdemona, Portia and Ophelia, and orientalist scenes including Albayde and Ruth Gleaning– even in the latter, her robe is open to reveal a good deal of naked flesh. Doubtless as a result of this tutelage, Calbet developed his own particular taste for nude studies of women- especially in watercolour- for which he came to be renowned. To keep these pictures respectable, he- like his former master- often situated the female figures in the classical past or labelled them as nymphs and goddesses.
The work of the young Calbet was noticed by the French President Armand Fallières, who came from the same region of Garonne, and whose friend he became, and thereafter his career took off, with official orders as well as private commissions. He exhibited regularly from 1880 at the Salon des artistes francais and received medals for his exhibited paintings at the salons of 1891-93. Further awards and distinctions followed later in his life.
Calbet’s taste for nude studies seems to have fed into his illustrative work, commissions for which included several erotic titles as well as more literary work for example, titles by Zola and Maupassant, Rousseau’s Confessions, Ronsard’s Amours, Edmond Pilon’s Libertine Tales from the Eighteenth Century, Homer’s Odyssey, poet Paul Verlaine’s Fetes Galantes and Henri Bataille’s La Femme nue (1911). The artist also supplied magazines- such as L’Illustration and L’Appel– with illustrations, for example illustrating a short story, Le veuvage de Shéhérazade, by Henri de Régnier (husband of Pierre Louys’s lover) which was published in the Christmas 1925 issue of L’Illustration.
In 1898 the Parisian publishers Librairie Borel commissioned Calbet to illustrate an new edition of Pierre Louys’ second novel, Aphrodite- or Ancient Manners (1896). Although this is a distinctly erotically-themed book, in his engravings Calbet was quite restrained in his response to the explicit passages, for instance only hinting broadly at the lesbian themes that are actually quite central to the story.
This tacit editing of the text may partly reflect the mores of the period, and the requirements of the publisher, but it is also indicative of the potentially powerful role that artists can perform. Whether consciously or not, illustrators may ‘censor’ works by means of the scenes they choose to portray or in the manner in which they decide to depict particular characters. Conversely, some artists may feel at liberty to go beyond what the text says, perhaps making explicit what is only implied in the author’s words, or- even- choosing to make a text appear more erotic than it really is, something that is likely to have been encouraged by publishers to boost sales. Curiously, Calbet illustrates both these tendencies: he shows Chrysis asleep on a bed with Rhodis and Myrtocleia, but not ‘in bed’ with them (although, to be fair, Louys is allusive here too) but the painter also chose to expand certain minor aspects of the text because (one presumes) they interested him aesthetically.
So, as I’ve observed before, Calbet seems to have been particularly taken with the character Melitta, a novice courtesan at the temple of Aphrodite, and he illustrated the chapter about her quite copiously. His plates proved influential upon the painter and cartoonist Edouard Zier (1856-1924) when he came to illustrate the book in 1906. In much the same way, when Renee Ringel approached the text in 1944, she too followed Calbet’s lead in illustrating a line that could easily have been overlooked. Accordingly, it appears that as the first illustrator of this famous and successful text, Calbet came very quickly to be seen as the model or guide to later artists. Perhaps many flicked through his 1896 edition to see how he had responded to the text. Amongst the episodes in the book that especially attracted Calbet, and which received multiple in-text illustrations, were the crowd scenes in Alexandria (which, for example, Mariette Lydis also depicted); the flute-players Rhodis and Myrtocleia and their relationship to the book’s main character, Chrysis (which fascinated many subsequent artists); the courtesans of the temple of Aphrodite (hilariously, Calbet depicts a pair of geisha girls); the bacchanal at Bacchis’ home; the modelling of a sculpture by Demetrios based on Chrysis’ executed body and the burial of her corpse by her devoted friends, Rhodis and Myrtocleia (as was depicted by Firmin Maglin). As I have noted in other posts, it seems that Calbet was especially interested in the younger female characters in the story, those such as the young Melitta and the others like her who devoted themselves to Aphrodite, giving their minds, bodies and lives to the service of the goddess and her temple- as is described by Louys in Book 2, chapter 6.
Book 2, c.6, The Rose of Chrysis
The original version of the story, which Louys wrote between July and December 1895, was initially serialised in the newspaper Le Mercure de France, from August until January the next year. The first edition of the book was published on March 28th 1896 by Le Mercure, which was making the transition from newspaper to publishing house; only forty copies were printed and they sold out within ten days. Very positive reviews encouraged Librarie Borel to publish the text as the edition illustrated by Calbet in 1896, although the print run was only slightly less limited than Le Mercure‘s: ninety-eight copies were issued. This was in turn reprinted in 1900 because demand had been high.
At some later point, however, the original text was revised and expanded with two new chapters (those featuring young princess Cleopatra and the discovery of the murdered priestess in the temple gardens by Melitta). These additional sections did not alter the basic plot at all; they were essentially free-standing, most notably the chapter concerning Cleopatra. Their point was not to advance the story of Chrysis or to give further insights into the psychology of the main characters; rather, they were added by Louys purely to examine the personality and sexuality of these two young females. As for Calbet he contributed colour plates to furthers edition of the (revised) Aphrodite published in 1910.
The artist also illustrated Louys’ retelling of the myth of Leda for an edition published by Borel in 1898. This book included fifteen engravings (most full page), plus a frontispiece. You will note that the image of Leda with the swan was later worked up by Calbet into a painting (see above).
Calbet would very probably be a far more obscure artist than he is were it not for his work on the books of Louys (and others). Despite this, the way that the choices he made as to the scenes to illustrate seem to have proved remarkably influential, steering many following artists (perhaps both negatively as well as positively). This position seems to have arisen from his status as the first illustrator of Aphrodite, if not the first illustrator of any of the books of Pierre Louys.
This discussion has been adapted and expanded from the passage on Calbet in my recent book on twentieth century book illustration: the cover is, itself, a plate designed for Aphrodite by the artist, possibly depicting Egyptian queen Berenice.
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