GRASSET, Eugène-Samuel
French illustrator, decorative artist and printmaker of Swiss birth. Before arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1871, Grasset had been apprenticed to an architect, attended the Polytechnic in Zurich and travelled to Egypt. In Paris, he found employment as a fabric designer and graphic ornamentalist, which culminated in his first important project, the illustrations for Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (1883).
In 1881, he was commissioned by Rodolphe Salis to design furnishing in a medieval style for the latter’s new Chat Noir cabaret in Montmartre. This project brought him in direct contact with Montmartre avant-garde artists, among them Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Grasset’s numerous posters include Librairie romantique (1887), Encre L. Marquet (1892), Grafton Gallery, London (1893) and the series of ten decorative panels produced in 1897 in which he combined his concern for design with the dramatic representation of women, a preoccupation characteristic of the 1890s. Most notable among Grasset’s graphic achievements are the lithographs La Vitrioleuse (1894) for the album L’Estampe originale (1893-95) and La Morphinomane (1897), both of which are dramatic and frightening images of women, whose bold, decorative treatment is derived from Japanese prints. By the end of the century, Grasset’s reputation as a leading figure in the development of Art Nouveau poster design was well established.
During the 1890s, Grasset applied the same method of design that he had used in Histoire des quatre fils Aymon to his compositions for posters, ceramics, stained glass and tapestries. He enclosed areas of local colour within strong outlines in the manner of leaded stained glass. Grasset’s form of Cloisonnism was reinforced by the theories of the Nabis. He was one among several artists who created designs for Tiffany stained-glass windows that were included in the opening exhibition of Siegfried Bing’s Salon de l’Art Nouveau in December 1895.
Grasset was an important figure in the Arts and Crafts movement in France. He acted as professor of decorative arts at the Ecole Normale d’Enseignement du Dessin, Paris. His two-volume La Plante et ses applications ornementales (1897-1900) is a graphic summation of his teaching on the subject during the previous two decades. Around 1900 he created the Grasset roman and italic typeface for Peignot Frères: this was followed in 1905 by Méthode de composition ornementale, which graphically explained basic design components valid for all media. His theories and designs were ideologically and stylistically compatible with those of the Vienna Secessionists, founded in 1897, and he was one of the few artists invited by the group to contribute to its magazine Ver Sacrum. At the Exposition Universelle, Paris, in 1900, Grasset was represented by tapestry, ceramics, stained glass and enamelled jewellery, while his students exhibited 150 wallpaper designs.
Grasset’s series of brooches and buckles for the exhibition were designed for the firm of Henri Vever. They include such dramatic symbolist images as Apparitions, in which the haunting heads of two women are superimposed, as well as highly decorative floral designs based on tenets expressed in La Plante et ses applications ornementales.
