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(b Altona, Holstein, 21 July 1877; d Avon,
Seine-et-Marne, 1926).
Swiss painter and printmaker of German birth. He became a
Swiss citizen and received his artistic training under
Joseph Mittey (b 1853) at the Ecole des Arts
Décoratifs in Geneva. Following brief success there, Schwabe
moved to Paris where he supported himself as a designer of
wallpaper while he developed considerable graphic skills. He
soon became active in Symbolist circles, winning favour as
an illustrator of mystical religious themes. His highly
refined drawings and watercolours accompany texts such as
Le Rêve by Emile Zola (published 1892; drawings, Paris,
Pompidou; exhibited Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, also
in 1892), Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1900),
Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Catulle Mendes’s
L’Evangile de l’enfance de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ
selon Saint Pierre (1900) and Albert Samain’s Jardin
de l’Infante (1908). Luxurious editions of his coloured
etchings, woodcuts and lithographs, created for
bibliophiles, were exhibited at the Salon of the Société
Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1897. |
