Henri Rivière: The 36 Views of the Eiffel Tower [HD]

Описание: Henri Rivière (March 11, 1864 – August 24, 1951) was a French artist and designer best known for his creation of a form of shadow play at the Chat Noir cabaret, and for his post-Impressionist illustrations of Breton landscapes and the Eiffel Tower.

Henri Rivière’s most famous series of lithographs is entitled “The Thirty-six Views of the Eiffel Tower”, inspired by Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. In gestation from 1888, it should have been executed on wood, but it is finally executed in lithography. Each print requires the successive printing of five lithographic matrices. The series was completed in 1902 and printed in 500 copies.

Between 1882 and 1886 Rivière created a large number of etchings. He also showed an interest in photography, making a series of picturesque scenes of everyday life. He later experimented with colour woodcuts and chromolithography in the late 1880s. Rivière first visited Brittany in 1884, spending most of his summers there until 1916. Together with bustling Parisian life, rural Brittany constituted the majority of the subjects of his landscape works.

Rivière’s prints were generally intended to be published as collections. These include forty images used in Breton Landscapes, created between 1890 and 1894. He also made colour woodcuts for The Sea: Studies of Waves, and prepared other sequences that remained unfinished, including 36 Views of the Eiffel Tower, which were eventually published as lithographs. These were influenced by the vogue for Japonism at the time, modernising the famous prints by Hiroshige and Hokusai of 36 Views of Mount Fuji.

Rivière ceased making prints in 1917, effectively retiring as a professional artist, but continued to work on watercolours in his later years. He died on August 24, 1951.