Adolphe Willette
French, 1857 - 1926
French illustrator, printmaker and painter. After studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Willette entered the studio of Alexandre Cabanel where he encountered Rodolphe Salis, the future founder in Montmartre of the Chat Noir cabaret (1881) and journal (1882). As a member of the Club des Hydropathes (1874–81), a group of writers, actors and artists who met regularly at a café in the Quartier Latin and from 1881 at the Chat Noir, Adolphe Willette became associated with the anti-establishment, humorous and satirical spirit of the avant-garde artistic community in Montmartre.
Willette was an early and regular illustrator of the Chat Noir and Courrier français (founded in 1885), the two principal (albeit tongue-in-cheek) chronicles of Montmartre. For two years from 1888 Willette and the poet Emile Goudeau published the satirical journal Le Pierrot: in 1896 and 1897 they collaborated on the sporadically issued journal Vache enragée which served as a forum for the artists of Montmartre. Willette is best known for his numerous sympathetic depictions of a pierrot (e.g. Pierrot pendu, lithograph, in A. Marty: L’Estampe originale, vi, 1894), who resembles the artist himself and serves as a metaphor for the alienation of artists from society.
Willette’s philosophical and political views were a strange combination of anarchism, socialism, nationalism, militarism, anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism, all of which he promoted in his prints and illustrations. In 1889 he created a lithographic poster announcing his candidacy on an anti-Semitic platform for the local legislative election. His illustrations during the 1890s for Edouard Drumont’s journal Libre parole graphically put forth the fanatical anti-Semitic rhetoric of the writer-politician. Together Willette’s images and Drumont’s essays helped to establish the virulently anti-Semitic environment in France at the end of the century. Other prominent satirical journals for which Willette worked were Le Rire, Assiette au beurre and Canard sauvage. Although less prolific as a printmaker, he created three lithographs for André Marty’s L’Estampe originale (1893–5).
Willette executed numerous decorative schemes for cabarets, dance halls and cafés. He also decorated the waiting-room of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris (1904).
Phillip Dennis Cate. "Willette, Adolphe." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T091643 (accessed March 8, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1864 - 1901
