Anton Seder (after)
Th. Mayerhofer, M. Jaffé, E. Beck, A. Berger (lithographers, engravers and printers)
Piscis
[Shells]
from Das Thier In Der Decorativen Kunst [Animals in Decorative Art]
Gerlach & Schenk, Vienna: 1896-98
Chromolithographs
Piscis: 16.25 x 11.75 inches, printed border; 17.75 x 13 inches, overall
Shells: 15.5 x 11.25 inches, printed border; 17 x 12.75 inches, overall
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.
Seder Art Nouveau Aquatic Animals Motifs
Chromolithograph Prints, 1890s
Chromolithograph Prints, 1890s
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See works by other Art Nouveau decorative arts designers here.
See works by other Art Nouveau decorative arts designers here.
Prints from a series by Anton Seder incorporating imagery of sea life creatures into elaborate and innovative Art Nouveau designs rendered in rich colors. One composition integrates an assortment of shells with underwater flora into an artful still life. An accompanying print (offered as a pair) presents exotically rendered fish in a highly stylized composition. Another depicts a school of lobsters drifting through a current with a smaller rectangular band of drifting crabs below; surrounding the entire image is a decorative border of crabs and seaweed printed in light gray.
The sinuous lines and incorporation of naturalistic motifs are typical of Art Nouveau, though other Victorian stylistic influences are also at work, including Baroque revival in the stylized ribbons of seaweed, and a sensibility derived from Japanese screens in the print such as where fish and seaweed overlap geometric shapes. These were designed by Anton Seder, and bear his distinctive A.S. monogram or name, sometimes incorporated into the design.
Anton Seder, a painter from Munich, was the first director of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (College of Decorative Arts), founded in 1890 by the city of Strasbourg as part of a plan for the artistic revival of the region. He remained as director until 1920 and also designed the decorative facade of the school’s building. Seder co-edited the magazine Das Kunstgewerbe in Elsass-Lothringen [The Arts and Crafts in Alsace-Lorraine]. Strasbourg had been ceded by France to Germany in 1871, and was returned to France in 1918. Therefore, the cultural environment was a mixture of French and German influences. His best known works are Die Pflanze in Kunst und Gewerbe [The Plant in Art and Trade] (Gerlach & Schenk, Vienna: 1890), which incorporated plants into decorative motifs, and Das Thier In Der Decorativen Kunst [Animals in Decorative Art] (Gerlach & Schenk, Vienna: 1896-98), similarly incorporating animals and mythical dragons into decorative motifs.
The Gorham Manufacturing Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, had a copy of Seder’s Das Thier in its library, and produced a silver pitcher in 1900 embellished with a dragon directly inspired by Seder’s title page. Indeed, collections of prints like Das Thier provided source material for designers of fabrics, wallpaper, ceramics, book illustrations, posters, and advertisements, and were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. The leading Victorian publication of this type was Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, first issued in a folio edition in London in 1856. Other trendsetting styles in art, design, decoration and fashion came from Paris, and many such print collections were published there by Armand Guérinet and others; the works by Eugene Alain Seguy on our site, incorporating butterfly and insect motifs, are one example, the prints of Arsène Herbinier, another. Closely related to Seder’s renditions of aquatic motifs are the designs of Emile Belet. Another related artist was Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), a professor of zoology, at the University of Jena, Germany. Haeckel’s scientific illustrations depicted aquatic organisms such as radiolarians, jellyfish, sea urchins and so forth in flowing, aesthetically striking compositions, such as were included in his work Kunstformen der Natur [Art Forms in Nature] (1899-1904).
References:
Breidbach, Olaf, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Richard Hartmann. Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel. New York: Prestel, 1998.
Derville, Frank. “Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.” Art Nouveau World Wide. 1993-2004. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/artnouveau/en/villes/strasbourg/batiments/academie01.htm (25 February 2005).
“Gorham Manufactoring Co.: A Martele Dragon Pitcher.” The British Antique Dealers’ Association. http://suntest.penseroso.com/provenart/dealer_stock_details.cgi?d_id=231&a_id=2085 (5 July 2005).