|
|
" In art, immorality cannot exist.
Art is always sacred"
August Rodin
Martin van Maele
Martin van Maële
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martin van Maele (born Maurice François Alfred Martin) (October 12, 1863- September 5, 1926) was a French illustrator for early 20th century literature. He is renowned for his work in the field of erotic literature. He was born in the city of Boulogne sur Seine.
His parents were Virginie Mathilde Jeanne Van Maele and Louis Alfred Martin (himself an engraver and later a teacher at the Beaux-Arts school in Geneva). His real name was Maurice François Alfred Martin, but for publishing his works he used the pseudonym of Martin van Maele, which is a combination of his mother's maiden name and his father's surname. He also sometimes used the pseudonym A. Van Troizem.
He married Marie Françoise Genet, who lived in Chantilly, Oise at the time of his death. They had no children. He had a brother, Philibert Genet, who lived in Lyon. He died on September 5, 1926 and is buried in the cemetery of Varennes-Jarcy.
Little is known about the life of Martin van Maele. Van Maele worked at Brussels as well as Paris, and his best known work – consisting among other things of an illustrated edition of Paul Verlaine's poems – was published in small, secretive editions by publisher Charles Carrington. The prints are considered both humoristic and satirical, sometimes cynical.
Van Maele's career is said to have really began with his illustrations for H.G. Wells in Les Premiers Hommes dans la Lune (or The First Men in the Moon), published by Felix Juven in 1901. The title later became the classic 1902 sci-fi silent film called Le Voyage Dans La Lune, produced by Georges Méliès. Van Maele also illustrated Anatole France's Thais, published by Charles Carrington, also in 1901. The following year, and occasionally thereafter, Van Maele worked as an illustrator for the Felix Juven's French translations of the Sherlock Holmes series.
His La Grande Danse macabre des vifs of 1905 was particularly erotic in content, as the illustration of fellatio at right amply illustrates.
