History of Art: Carlos Schwabe

Developments in the 19th Century

Art Styles in 19th century - Art Map

Carlos Schwabe

(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.