BAYROS (Franz von)

Wien, Verlag Dr. Rud. Ludwig, 1909.

12mo, bound at the Wiener Werkstätte, ivory half vellum over marbled paper boards, gilt square integrating the title on the front cover, black doublure, and endpapers, top edge gilt, inner gilt square mark “Wiener Werkstätte”. 43 pp., Illustrations by Franz von Bayros including a vignette on the half-title, a frontispiece, an ornate title, a headpiece, and a tailpiece, both repeated in the French text. Complete.

First edition.

The “Seizième joye de marriage” [The Sixteenth Joy of Marriage], by an anonymous author, is the continuation of Antoine de La Salle’s famous “Quinze joys de Mariage” [The Fifteen Joys of Marriage]. It was first published in Paris in 1866 by Pierre Jannet. This text is reproduced here, preceded by a German translation by E. K. Blümml and J. Latzenhofer.

The Austrian artist Franz von Bayros, also known by the pseudonyms Choisy le Conin and Venu de Bonestoc, was born in 1866 in Zagreb and died in 1924 in Vienna. After his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (in the class of Christian Griepenkerl), he became a portrait painter and a bookplate designer (influenced by Alfons Mucha, who worked in Vienna until 1881). He was shortly linked to the family of Johann Strauss, whose daughter-in-law Alice he married in 1896. Today, he is best remembered for his work as an illustrator of erotic literature. He is sometimes compared to Félicien Rops and Aubrey Beardsley. “Unlike the erotic drawings and illustrations of his contemporaries Klimt and Schiele, von Bayros’s gallant scenes are set in an imaginary eighteenth century, surrounded by arabesques mixing Rococo and Jugendstil” (Apocalypse).

One of 575 numbered copies on Strathmore Japanese paper of a total issue of 600 copies.

A very good copy.

Ref. Jean Clair, Vienne 1880-1938, l’apocalypse joyeuse (1986), p. 718 / Rudolf Bretschneider, Franz von Bayros. Bibliographie seiner Werke und beschreibendes Verzeichnis seiner Exlibris, (1926), 45 / Giovanni Fanelli, Dizionario degli illustratori simbolisti e art nouveau, (1990), I, pp. 26-27 / Bernhard Stern-Szana, Bibliotheca curiosa et erotica, (1921), 29