Carlos Schwabe was born Émile Martin Charles Schwabe, into a Jewish family in 1866 in Altona,
Holstein in Northern Germany.
But a few years later they moved to Geneva in Switzerland and between 1882 and 1884 he
studied art there at at the École des Arts Industriels.
Once he had completed his training he left for Paris, which was at the time a powerful
magnet for any aspiring visually creative person in Europe.
Initially he found work as a wallpaper designer, and spent his leisure time in the bars and
cafes of Montmartre, befriending the bohemian artists and writers. And despite taking Swiss
nationality in 1888 Paris would be his permanent home for the rest of his life.
But in addition to his design work he continued to pursue his ambitions as a fine artist and
in 1892, when he was 26, he exhibited some of his paintings at a group exhibition held
at the Salon de la Rose et Croix, and also created the poster which was used to advertise
the show.
Schwabe, along with a number of his associates, was a follower of the obscure spiritual cult
Rosicrucianism, which exerted a strong influence on his art.
His subjects were generally mythological and allegorical and were largely considered to
belong to the Symbolist movement, although he was somewhat of a late arrival in that
regard.
As an illustrator he gravitated toward similar themes and naturally this was reflected in
the literature he chose to visualise.
It was in 1892 that his illustrations for Emile Zola's Le Rêve were published. And
although he shared the task of illustrating Zola's text with fellow illustrator Lucien
Métivet, it was his series of dramatically compelling images, and the book's subsequent
popular and critical success, which led to his permanent parallel career in illustration.
Most of what I could find from this book is line only, but there are also a few colour
versions to be found which I suspect come from a later reprinted edition. But they have
been coloured with considerable sensitivity and although it's guesswork on my part I would
be fairly confident it was Schwabe himself who added the colour.
In the following year he published a series of line and wash illustrations for a translation
by the writer Catulle Mendés of The Gospel of the Infancy of Christ, originally written
in latin in the 10th century. This was a clear demonstration of both his illustrative abilities
and fascination with religious themes, and this collection of formally composed images
made great creative use of a limited restrained colour palette of considerable emotive strength.
in 1894 he was chosen to be one of a group of illustrators who each contributed to specific
sections in Eduard Haraucourt's book L'Effort. Schwabe was commissioned to illustrate L'Immortalité,
and although there were also a few figurative narrative monochrome illustrations the bulk
of his contribution was in the form of colour page decorations of great aesthetic beauty.
His work was by now featuring alongside Mucha and others in the prestigious arts magazine
l'Image and in 1897 he designed a particularly compelling dramatic poster for Vincent d'Indy's
opera Fervaal.
In 1899 he published an illustrated edition of the ancient Greek tale of Chrysis, the
priestess of Hera, and his illustrations for this largely erotic tale were a vehicle for
a change in Schwabe's use of colour.
Where he had previously favoured fairly basic washes he was now using a much more textural
and tonal method which blended watercolour washes with gouache and a combination of pencil,
crayons and pastels. The results were a considerable visual success and he continued with this
technique on many later projects, including his next.
This was his 1900 edition ofCharles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, featuring a series of suitably
disturbing colour images by Schwabe which amplified and illuminated the author's dark
sexual and violent themes with great success.
Even though some of these images were - and still are - considered challenging to more
sensitive viewers, they were undoubtedly one of his greatest and most enduring collection
of illustrations, and the perfect symbiosis of words and pictures.
More illustration and art, some religious some decidedly not, followed in the first
couple of years of the new century and in 1903 Schwabe worked with Catulle Mendés again
on the book of epic verse Hespérus.
As with the Beaudelaire book this too contained its fair share of adult material but also
more chivalric and heroic subjects, and the overall tone of these illustrations, which
were a return to his earlier less textured line and wash approach, used an attractive
light colour palette and were considerably less visually disturbing.
Despite the volume of illustration Schwabe was creating in this period he continued to
paint with success and in 1907 he created what is generally considered his most significant
and enduring painting La Vague. When first exhibited it caused a sensation in Paris and
both the studies he made to inform the rendering and posing of the vatious figures and of course
the painting itself represent a significant milestone in the development of 20th century
fantasy art.
In1908 he illustrated the religious book Paroles d'un Croyante, originally written in 1834,
with a series of unexpectedly grainy monochromes. These appear to have been created either as
drawings in crayon or possibly as stone lithographs, but whatever they are they are certainly not
pen and ink.
In the same year he illustrated Albert Samain's Jardin de l'infante, and in this instance
it's known that his original pencil drawings were reproduced as wood engravings by a Monsieur
Beltrand. A two colour palette was used at printing with debatable purpose but nevertheless
the results were particularly dramatic and visually memorable.
And in a run of productivity that is hard to comprehend 1908 also saw the publication
of Maurice Maeterlinck's La Vie Des Abielles and Schwabe's contribution could not have
been more unlike his usual approach.
For this project he created a a series of charming rural scenes which unusually for
Schwabe not only had not the faintest whiff of the decadent but also didn't feature a
single human figure.
This seems to have been the only publication for which he used this approach and had he
not been credited in the book it would be hard to identify Schwabe as the creator.
In 1913 he produced a series of more brutal monochromes for a limited edition of Olive
Schreiner's Rêves. This was a limited edition of only 1100 copies. These images look very
much like wood engraving but I can find no definitive evidence, and they might just be
pen and ink mimicking that effect.
During the Great War Schwabe seems to have gone underground to an extent, and more than
likely concentrated on his art, But he did create this grotesque monochrome indictment
of Germany's aggression based on an earlier image produced originally for Les Fleurs du
Mal.
Following the end of the war his creative output in art and illustration increased dramatically,
and in 1922 Schwabe published his illustrated edition of Pelléas et Mélisande, written
by Maurice Maeterlinck thirty years earlier. This fantasy romance proved to be a perfect
match for his highly rendered visually absorbing technique, and this rare original artwork
from the series clearly shows his prowess with the combination of ink, wash and crayon.
And apparently with the lighter side of his imagination very much to the fore in 1925
he illustrated the ancient love story of Daphnis et Chloe, written by the Greek poet Longus
in the 2nd century. This project also featured similarly attractive and absorbing colour
images which succeeded in bringing this romance to visual life.
Sadly, It seems that this was his last published work, and in 1926 Carlos Schwabe died at the
age of only 60 in Avon, Seine-et-Marne.
More than most Schwabe had successfully straddled the two disciplines of art and illustration
without apparent compromise in either. His fascination for the darker side of human imagination,
use of symbolism and spiritual imagery were common to both, and the work he produced indicated
that he accepted and worked with the constraints of print just as well as he did with his painted
art. Why he isn't better known, especially to devotees of fantasy art, I can't imagine.
And if this video does anything at all to address that then I'll take a certain pride
in having brought him to wider attention and appreciation.
died 1926