'Les Artistes du Livre'. Henry Babou. Volume 11 of the collection “Les Artistes du Livre” dedicated to Alméry Lobel-Riche (Genoa, Switzerland, 1877 - Paris, 1950) Numbered copy I of L. Critical study by Gabriel Boissy and preface by Alphonse Séché. Includes a self-portrait by Lobel-Riche Edited by Henry Babou. Paris, 1930. Published under the direction of Marcel Valotaire. Signed on the colophon (signature unidentified) 27 x 21 cm.   Besides the portrait, it includes the following illustrations: Les diaboliques, La maison de danses (two plates), Chéri, Les Luxures (Les Névroses), La danse (1st state), Les bars, Les martyrs (two plates), Etude, La fille aux yeux d’or, L’Atlantide, Les fleurs du mal, La maison Tellier, Poil de carotte, Etudes de filles, Le spleen de Paris (two plates), Un crépuscule d’Islam, Agora, Le doute éternel, Le journal d’une femme de chambre, Vingt histoires extraordinaires.   Between 1928 and 1933, publisher Henry Babou published an important series of monographic works entitled ‘Les artistes du livre’, a collection of volumes that provides valuable documentation on various illustrators of the early 20th century, such as Carlège, Jean-Emile Laboureur, Hermann Paul, Sylvain Sauvage and Perrichon, among many others. Each volume in this collection is dedicated to a specific artist and their illustrative work. It contains a critical study and bibliography of the artist's work, accompanied by a portrait, either by the artist themselves, as in this case, or by one of their contemporaries, and various reproductions of their most emblematic illustrations, both in black and white as well as in colour.   Doctor of Comparative Literature and Cultural History from the Universities of Strasbourg and Lausanne, Marie-Charlotte Quin is the author of a very interesting article on this collection, published in volume 18, ‘Littérarisation des patrimoines,’ of the literary magazine RELIEF. In the initial summary of this article, which we recommend reading, Quin notes the following: 'The “Les artistes du livre” collection is a contemporary initiative aimed at preserving a specific artistic heritage, that of illustration, at a time marked by great enthusiasm for illustrated books. Henry Babou, editor of the collection, adopts a device that has the particularity of reviving the codes of the object that contribute to sanctifying the luxury book. Furthermore, the commitment of the authors, the primary beneficiaries of the effects of illustration in their works, helps to legitimise the practice and elevate it to the status of art. In the ‘letter prefaces’, they outline both the contours of an underlying trend, the specific characteristics of the practice and the artistic singularities of the illustrator to whom they are addressed.'   Lobel-Riche was a Swiss painter, engraver and illustrator, although he lived his entire life in France. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the French capital, where he would illustrate his first book a few years later: Ollendorff's La Main gauche de Guy de Maupassant (1902). From that year until 1910, he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français. It was in 1908 that Lobel-Riche made the leap to high illustration with the book... After briefly studying at the School of Fine Arts in Montpellier, he moved to Paris in 1895. He began by publishing some drawings in humorous magazines and illustrated his first book in 1902, La Main gauche de Guy de Maupassant (Ollendorff). That same year, he made his first contribution to the Salon des Artistes Français, where he would exhibit until 1910. In 1908, he entered the world of high illustration with the book by brothers Jérôme and Jean Tharaud, La ville et les champs, and in 1922 he illustrated The Spleen of Paris by the magnificent Baudelaire.     Reference bibliography: - Quin, Marie-Charlotte. (2024). The collection ‘Les artistes du livre’ by publisher Henry Babou (1928-1933). ‘RELIEF - REVUE ÉLECTRONIQUE DE LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE’, 18(2), 19-38. https://doi.org/10.51777/relief21155