Category talk:Daniel Urrabieta Vierge
Most images in Category:Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge not by Vierge[edit]
Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge, or simply Daniel Vierge, as he is often (and less confusingly) referred to, should not be confounded with his father, Vicente Urrabieta, or his brother, Samuel Urrabieta Vierge.
Of the 23 pictures shown on the Wikimedia Commons page Category:Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge, only 3 are by Daniel Vierge:
1. Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - an engraving by Abot after Vierge.
3. Michelet - Histoire de France - Lacroix 1880 tome 1 - illustration - page 283
Note his customary signature - "VIERGE" - in the lower left corner of numbers 2 and 3.
Although number 1 isn't signed, the illustration was reprinted in Edgar Poe, Histoires Extraordinaires, translated by Charles Baudelaire, Paris, A. Quantin, 1884, p. 2, and is labelled there "Abot d'apres Vierge." Apparently its first publication was in Racconti Incredibili, Milan, 1876.
The other images on this page - Algerian men and women in tradtional dress (1876-1888), Amadeo I at the Elvas Railway Station, and the illustrations for Manuel Fernández y González's Los Monfies de las Alpujarras - are almost certainly by Daniel Vierge's father, Vicente Urrabieta, a prolific illustrator and lithographer, and, in August F. Jaccaci's words, "the most renowned illustrator of Spain at the time" ("Daniel Vierge, the Master Illustrator" in McClure's Magazine, volume VIII, November, 1896, to April, 1897, p. 414). According to the death notice in La Vie Moderne, January 3, 1880, p. 15, he produced no fewer than a million drawings during his career. Vicente Urrabieta's work is signed "URRABIETA," as one can see in the lower left corner of "Amadeo I at the Elvas Railway Station" and in some of the illustrations to Los Monfies de las Alpujarras shown on this Wikimedia Commons page. The illustration "Algerian men and women in traditional dress" is from Racinet's Le Costume Historique, Tome III, plates 101 to 200, and is labelled "Urrabietta [sic] lith." Usually one finds these volumes dated 1887 or 1888, at which time Vicente Urrabieta would have been dead (he died in 1879), but the publication of the material contained in them actually began in 1876 or 1877.
Daniel Vierge signed his work simply "VIERGE." As the Pennells state in their article "Daniel Vierge" in The Portfolio, London, 1888: "But Vierge, unlike many of his contemporaries, was unwilling to use his father's reputation as a stepping-stone to fame. Once he published drawings of his own, he signed them 'Vierge,' his mother's name" (p. 210). The author of the article on Vierge in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers speculates that he began this practice "to avoid being confused with his parent" (volume 5, New York, 1905, p. 300). The Art of the French Illustrated Book (1982?) by Gordon N. Ray asserts that he did so "to distinguish his work from that of his father" (p. 390 (?)), as does Les Peintres Gauchers (2005?) by Philippe Lanthony (p. 133). In the few examples I have found, Daniel's younger brother Samuel signed his productions "S. URRABIETA VIERGE." Joseph Pennell mentions that Daniel Vierge's "very talented but less brilliant brother ... signed his name S. Urrabieta, while Vierge always omits the Urrabieta" - Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, 1889 edition, p. 32. This information no longer appears in the 1920 edition. It was in this book, incidentally, that Pennell called Daniel Vierge "the greatest illustrator who ever lived" and his Pablo de Ségovie (Bonhoure, Paris, 1882), a French translation of Francisco de Quevedo's El Buscón, "the most brilliantly illustrated book every published" (p. 31).
Another indication that the illustrations for Los Monfies de las Alpujarras were not the work of Daniel Vierge or Samuel Urrabieta Vierge but of their father, Vicente Urrabieta, is that in 1856, when the book was first published (with the illustrations), Daniel, the elder brother, was only about 5 years old. Additionally, in the "brief details" of his life, written in French and published in the English edition of Pablo de Segovia (Unwin, 1892, p.xiv), the first work that Vierge mentions having illustrated is Eusebio Blasco's Madrid la Nuit (1867). The same information is repeated in the articles on Vierge in The New International Encyclopædia, volume XX, New York, 1911, p. 130 ("He illustrated his first book, Eusebio Blasco's Madrid La Nuit, in 1867...") and Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, p. 299-300 ("... at which time [1867] he had already begun his life's work by providing illustrations to 'Madrid la Nuit,' by Eusebio Blasco"). And according to Jules de Marthold, in Daniel Vierge: Sa Vie, Son Œuvre, 1906, p. 28, the first drawing signed with Vierge's name wasn't published until September 17, 1870, in issue 701 of Monde Illustré.
Then there is this remark in María Soledad Catalán Marín's La escenografía de los dramas románticos españoles (1834-1850), 2003, which, if I am not mistaken, affirms that Vicente Urrabieta illustrated Fernández y González's books:
"Las litografías sirvieron, igualmente, para ilustrar ediciones de novelas y de obras de teatro de la época, como las que realizó Vicente Urrabieta (1823-1879) de libros clásicos y novelas románticas de Larra y Fernández y González" (p. 121).
My Spanish isn't up to snuff, but I believe the meaning of the passage is something like this: "Lithographs served, likewise, to illustrate editions of novels and of works of the theater of the period, like those that Vicente Urrabieta (1823-1879) made for the classical books and romantic novels of Larra and Fernández y González."
Pictures Vicente Urrabieta did with J. J. Martines for an illustrated edition of Larra's El doncel de Don Enrique el doliente can be seen here and here and here, etc. As with the illustration "Algerian men and women in tradtional dress (1876-1888)," presently shown on Daniel Vierge's Commons Category page, these illustrations are not signed, but they are labelled "Urrabieta" (and "Martinez"). This edition was published in 1852, when Daniel Vierge would only have been about 1 year old. There is also a second volume, published in 1854, when Vierge would have been about 3.
I was surprised to find that this Wikimedia Commons page devoted to Daniel Vierge did not contain a a single illustration from the Don Quixote published by Scribner's in 4 volumes in 1906 or a single pen drawing from the aforementioned Pablo de Ségovie (Bonhoure), or the more complete Pablo de Segovia (Unwin), which is considered by many to be his masterpiece.
I would encourage anyone with sharp, detailed images of these drawings to upload them.
Perhaps I don't understand the concept of categories, but shouldn't the illustrations by Vicente Urrabieta be in a category of their own, rather than in that of his son, where they are apt to be mistaken for those of his son?
--64.134.31.188 21:42, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
- Sounds trustworthy to me. Files moved into new category as suggested by the IP. --Kreuzschnabel (talk) 19:13, 17 January 2014 (UTC)