Mes Modeles. Revue Artistique. Album 1905. 400 Etudes de Nu d'apres nature

Paris: [A Vignola] 1905, 1905. The first eighteen issues of Mes Modeles from 30th April to 20th October 1905. 275x195mm. Unpaginated but each issue is twelve pages and with a single leaf supplement with a full page nude. Each has a short one page introductory text on some aspect of nude photography ("Le Moral et la Physique", "Modes esthetiques", "Du bon gout") followed by a series of black and white photographs illustrating the theme. The eighteen issues are bound together in grey-green paper wrappers decorated in gold and lettered in dark blue. Bound in are two leaves of advertisements for risque publications, a preface by Vignola and a remarkably detailed index which allows the reader to search models by age, nationality, style and pose. Amédée Vignola edited three journals in which he sought to place the academic artistic treatment of the nude female model in the context of photography. Mes Modeles was aimed at artists, allowing them to train their eye to recognise the "true forms" of the human body. These "academic" photographs were intended to bridge the gap between study of antique sculpture or the painted Renaissance nude and the life model. A measure of the seriousness of Vignola's project is the fact that Matisse was a subscriber to Mes Modeles and acknowledged its influence in his development of an eroticised and voluptuous female form. Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist's Model. Marie Lathers.