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Paris, Bird Market by Max Pollak

Paris, Bird Market by Max Pollak

Paris, Bird Market

Max Pollak

Title

Paris, Bird Market

 
Artist

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)
Year
1926  
Technique
softground etching & color aquatint 
Image Size
10 3/8 x 13 1/4" platemark 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
38 of 100  
Annotations
pencil titled, in lower left; also inscribed "Plate confiscated by the Gestapo" and "printed a 50"; bears the red FPC collector's stamp in the lower left; from the collection of Friedl Pollak 
Reference
No. 6 on the checklist of titles included in Pollak's exhibition at the University of California, April 3 - May 15, 1949; Triton Museum of Art, Pollak Retrospective, cat. no. 24 
Paper
ivory simile vellum wove 
State
published 
Publisher
artist 
Inventory ID
22545 
Price
SOLD
Description

This expressive color intaglio, done in 1926 using soft-ground etching and aquatint, was printed both using color plates and a la poupée. The subject is the famous Parisian Bird Market, the “Marché aux Oiseaux” which takes place in the Louis Lépine flower district on the Il de la Cité on Sunday each week.

Now expanded to a pet market, dealers set up, often in antique cages, offering for sale various birds; finches, doves, canaries, parrots, as well as chickens, ducks and domestic fowl. On the ground are aquariums, hamsters, etc. It now is one of the last remaining pet markets in Europe.

This impression has a pencil inscription in the artist's hand that reads "Plate confiscated by the Gestapo". Though he anticipated an edition of 100 it is unlikely that he finished the edition and it is probable that the proofs were also confiscated.