Art Nouveau Sea Life Prints
E.A. Séguy: c. 1904

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Les Algues, Plate 26 Les Algues, Plate 32
Les Algues, Plate 26 Les Algues, Plate 32

Above: Les Algues Plate 26 and detail (left), and Plate 32 and detail (right)

E.A. [Émile-Alain] Séguy (1877-1945) (after)
A. Calavas (editor)
Bertin et Cie./Humblot & Simon, Nancy, France (printers)
Les Algues Plates 26 and 32
[Seaweed]
from Album de la Decoration, Vol. 2
Librarie des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, c. 1904
Chromolithographs
11.75 x 7.5 inches, image
14.25 x 10.5 inches, overall
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Pair of prints incorporating stylized scenes of ocean plants and animals into elaborate and innovative Art Nouveau designs rendered in rich colors.  One depicts three fish swimming among a feathery type of seaweed, in shades of red and blue-green.  The other features a variety of seaweed with flat leaves and rounded edges, punctuated by bulbous pod-like forms, and a crab nestled in the sand.  The designs emphasize the play of line and simplified shapes, with a color application suggesting transparent watercolor.  These were designed by E.A. Séguy, best known for his Art Nouveau designs based on butterfly, insect, and flower forms.  They are from the second volume of Album de La Decoration, a three-volume series of 60 plates each that included works by some of the best designers of the period.

Émile-Alain Séguy produced eleven albums of illustrations and designs from the turn of the century to the 1930s, and his style reflected the influences of both Art Nouveau and Art Deco. His various color portfolios of visual ideas for artists and designers often featured motifs based on the natural world, including flowers, foliage, crystals and animals. Although his compositions were design oriented, he made the depictions scientifically accurate. His later works showed an increased interest in geometric and cubist designs. The prints in the portfolios were produced using the pochoir technique characterized by rich, intense color. This printing process, utilized in the early 20th century for high quality prints, involved applying colors to each plate with a number of stencils. Séguy’s works include Les Fleurs et Leurs Applications Decoratives (1900), Samarkande – 20 Compositions en Couleurs dans le Style Oriental (1914), Floreal (1920), Papillons (1924), Insectes (1924), Primavera --Dessins et Coloris Nouveaux (1929), Suggestions (1930), and Prismes - 40 Planches de Dessins et Coloris Nouveaux (1931). 

The scholarly consensus is that E.A. Séguy’s full name was Émile-Alain Séguy and he lived from 1877 to 1945. Nonetheless, in some sources he is referred to as Eugène-Alain rather than Émile-Alain. This was probably in mistaken reference to Eugène-Alain Séguy (1890-1985), a professor in entomology at Le Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The Union List of Artist Names maintained by the Getty Research Institute lists the preferred name and spelling as "E.A. Séguy."

Collections of prints like these 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 in the second half of the 19th century, and early 20th century, came from Paris, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, and many such print collections were published there, including designs by Eugene Alain Séguy, Émile Belet, Ernst Haeckel, Arsène Herbinier, and Anton Seder, and publications by Armand Guérinet.  Some prints were separately issued to be framed and used as decoration in their own right, though were still known in the trade to be used for design inspiration, such as works by Émile Vouga and Christine Klein.  Generally the works were printed in rich colors with chromolithography.  Other print techniques frequently employed include pochoir (c. 1920s, with brilliant colors), hand-colored lithographs, heliotypes, etc.  To search our site for more Art Nouveau designs by such artists please type “Art Nouveau” or “decorative arts designs” into our search engine.

References:

“Album de la Decoration.”  Smithsonian Institution Research Information Systems.  2001-2004. http://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!421124!0 (22 April 2008).

Breidbach, Olaf, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Richard Hartmann.  Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel.  New York: Prestel, 1998.

Sear, Dexter. "E.A. Seguy Exhibition: 20 January - 21 March, 2003." Lancaster University Library. 18 February 2003. http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/INFO/LUNews.nsf/I/00001C1E (11 July 2003).