The lithograph Femme Sous la Lampe (Woman Under the Lamp) marked the original print debut of its creator, József Rippl-Rónai, as well as the height of the color print revival...
The lithograph Femme Sous la Lampe (Woman Under the Lamp) marked the original print debut of its creator, József Rippl-Rónai, as well as the height of the color print revival in France during the 1890s. Commissioned by La Revue Blanche, a groundbreaking journal based in Paris, the print also indicates the close connection that existed between avant-garde visual artists and their literary counterparts in fin de siècle France. Indeed some of the most experimental visual artists of the Post-Impressionist period, the Nabis, regularly contributed prints to La Revue Blanche, which gathered a dozen of these into a collectors’ portfolio, L’Album de la Revue Blanche, published in late 1894 or early 1895. Rippl-Rónai became the only central European artist to contribute a print to this prestigious project: Femme Sous la Lampe was that print. The print first appeared in Issue 34 (August 1894). And was reissued in L’Album de la Revue Blanche, which consisted of twelve loose prints, published in an edition of 50 numbered and signed copies. Writing in 1948, Thadée Nantanson noted that the album had become quite rare.