Undated [1925]. Etchings and aquatint printed directly onto cream card. The prints measure c175x140mm up to 230x175mm and the card 323x250mm.
 
Edouard Chimot (1880-1959) started late as an artist having begun a career as an architect. He used his evenings and spare time to draw and to teach himself etching. In the years before WWI, he had a Montmartre atelier where he drew “jeunes et jolies femmes”. His first artistic success came in 1919 with the illustrations for Rene Baudu’s Les Après-midi de Montmartre for which he produced etchings of "petites filles perdues" He went on to
produce a large number of illustrated books and was the artistic director of “Les Editions d’Art Devambez”.
 
His best years were during the 1920s which was when he created these images for an edition of Pierre Louys’s Les Chansons de Bilitis. First published in 1894, Louys’s poems are Sapphic both in subject matter and style and, indeed, he claimed (falsely) to have translated them from Ancient Greek, the originals having been written by a courtesan called Bilitis.
 
Incidentally, the first American lesbian civil rights group called themselves The Daughters of Bilitis. All eight prints are agreeably and suitably Sapphic and are good examples of Chimot’s characteristically louche, hot-house, Symbolist style.
 
The full suite of etchings runs to twelve but this is a nice collection in very good condition.