The Baur Collection, Geneva: Japanese Prints (2 volumes)

Collections Baur, Genève, 1994 Book. As New. Hardcover. 1st Edition. English and French text.; Hardcover (cloth with dust jacket in slipcase).; Two volumes in slipcase; 23.5 x 29.5 x 8 cm; 5.2 Kg; With colour and black and white illustrations throughout.; Limited edition of 3100 copies, of which this is 448.; Used book in very good condition. Looks as new. Minor signs of wear on the slipcase.; "These two volumes include the Japanese prints collected by Alfred Baur over the forty or so years from 1909 to 1949. This art form, is known to have exerted a decisive influence on the development of Western painting, offering first to Impressionist painters and then to the Nabil (to mention only France) an example of a new type of compositions that can serve as an alternative to the grand tradition inherited from the Renaissance. Van Gogh and Monet had assembled collections of prints that are still very carefully preserved and the writer Edmond de Goncourt, himself a well-informed collector, had published two major studies with the help of the Japanese merchant Tadamasa Hayashi, one on Utamaro, the other on Hokusai. Matthi Forrer, the author of the present catalogue, deals exhaustively with the "floating world" and with the various aspects of the production of these pictures carved on wood, a good knowledge of which is so important for an appreciation of the Japanese print.." excerpt from the introduction by Frank Dunand (keeper of the Baur Collection), 1994..