About the artist:

Emmanuel Robbe said "Manuel Robbe", born in Paris on December 16, 1872 and died in Nesles-la-Vallée in 1936, is a French painter and engraver. The son of Alfred Auguste Charles Robbe and Marie Alphonsine Henry, the young Emmanuel Robbe studied at Condorcet High School where he became friends with Gaston de Pawlowski, then joined the lycée Louis-le-Grand, one of the best high schools in Paris. La France. He then became a pupil of the Julian Academy where he rubbed shoulders with many personalities, then entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris. In November 1897, he has a son of Céline Bluem called "Maud" (1877-?), Also named Manuel, and he recognizes in 1899 with witnesses Jules Depaquit and Georges Delaw, the mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris. The couple divorced in 1911. Robbe quickly becomes an accomplished engraver specializing in the technique of aquatint. He regularly exhibits in the salons of the Society of French artists; the Paris merchants Edmond Sagot, Georges Petit and Pierrefort publish and distribute his engraved works. In 1895, his poster for the L'Éclatante oil lamp is reproduced in the magazine Les Maîtres de l'affiche edited by Jules Chéret (1895-1900). An engraving entitled Menuet d'automne, is published in L'Estampe moderne (1897). In 1900, during the Universal Exhibition, his work was awarded the bronze medal, for an engraving entitled Summer (etching in colors of 25.5 × 40 cm). His drawings are published in Cocorico (1898-1900) and Le Frou-frou (1901-1902). In 1905, the Georges Petit Gallery presented its work as part of a major exhibition entitled Original etchings in color. During his life as an artist, Manuel Robbe produces many aquatints, dry points, etchings and some advertising posters as well as many unique works (oils on canvas, watercolors or pastels). An accomplished sportsman, he was captain of the Fine Arts fencing team, during the interprofessional championship in Paris in 1912. During the 1914-1918 war, when he was free from all obligations, he enlisted in the air force as a pilot and was awarded the War Cross with citations for his heroic deeds of arms; which explains why there are hardly any works dating from this period, but which is worth to us several engravings representing German and French military planes5. The works of Manuel Robbe are a moving testimony of the lives of women and men of his time. Manuel Robbe likes to travel a lot and has a real attachment to Brittany that he has portrayed on many occasions. Reached an incurable evil, he died in 1936, having devoted much of his life to print. He is buried in Nesles-la-Vallée (Val-d'Oise) where he had a second home.