La Marche Au Soleil. Epopée De La Mission Marchand by Shadow Theater - 1900

Paris: E. Flammarion & Enoch & Cie., 1900. Oblong 4to, decorated green boards in a darker green all-over leaf patteern with vignette and lettering in black on uppr and lower boards. Copyright 1900. Extremely nice copy. Music by Georges Fragerolle. Poem by Léon Durocher. Illustration by Léon Levy. Vignettes on title page and 20 full page color lithograph plates, each facing a page of verse or music, most with vignettes. The Marchand Mission (1897-1898) was a French colonialist expedition to counter British expansionism in the Sudan. The French eventually withdrew and ceded the Sudan to the British. Shadow theater plays, developed and directed by Henri Rivière, were popular events at the Chat Noir, the avant-garde cabaret. Illuminated cut-out silhouette forms moved across the stage, their shadows projected onto a screen. They were converted into color lithographs for the books that were contemporaneously produced. They influenced early fils and the art of Lautrec, Bonnard and Vuillard. An illustration can be found on my website by clicking on Catalogue 31 (item 72a.). Decorated Boards. Near Fine. Illus. by Léon Leroy. Oblong 4to.