Artist: Ferdinand Bach (1859-1952) German

Title: Yvette Guilbert, Scala

Medium: Lithograph (1896 edition) MDL #19

Dimensions: Framed 26” x17”, Unframed 15” x 6”

Description

Ferdinand Bach’s art nouveau poster promotes Yvette Gilbert’s performance at the famous Parisian music hall, “Scala’ in 1893. It’s elongated format in which the singer is depicted in profile, wearing a long white dress and her signature black gloves is elegant and bold. Bach makes Gilbert stand out against a background of complementary orange and blues. It shows Gilbert holding the statue of a degenerate aristocrat on a pedestal reading "fin de siecle," with Paris in the background. It is one of a series of three posters he designed for her.

Bio:

Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach, known as Ferdinand Bac, was born in Stuttgart, Germany. His father, Karl Philipp Heinrich Bach was a geologist, cartographer and landscape architect, the illegitimate son of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. Ferdinand was born to his father’s second wife, Sabina Ludovica de Stetten, daughter of Baron Sigismund-Ferdinand Stetten. Ferdinand Bac, a second cousin of Napoleon III, was raised on the margin of the court of the Second Empire. He moved to Paris with his mother to lead a Bohemian life after the collapse of the Empire.

As a young man, he mixed in the fashionable world of Paris of the Belle Époque, and was known for his satirical caricatures, which appeared in popular journals. Bac was an extremely active illustrator working for magazines, publishing albums and designing books. Like so many other artists of his generation, he also designed posters. He is mainly remembered as one of Yvette Guilbert's favorite artists. He designed three posters for the music hall star, promoting her appearances at Horloge (1892), Scala (1893) and Ambassadeurs (1895).