PAUL BERTHON MAI. 1898.

26 1/2x15 inches. Chaix, Paris.
Condition B+: repaired tears in margins affecting image.
As heavily influenced by his mentor, Eugene Grasset, as he was, Berthon was able to find his own unique style, which is easy to recognize and holds a very strange appeal. From Grasset, Berthon adapted the association of women and nature, but from this point their approach diverges. Berthon replaces Grasset's Arts and Crafts medievalism with soft, sensual, pastel visions. Berthon's women are more sensual than Grasset's, not symbolic evocations of an ideal so much as dreamy flesh and blood. Although Berthon died very young, the relatively few lithographs he produced belong to the best of the French Art Nouveau movement. Grasset / Berthon p. 107.