This portrait ex-libris has great interest for the collector, but the simple photograph, in all its detestably scientific truth and brutal exactitude, cannot be considered as a respectable or desirable member of the ex-libris family.
Little need be said concerning modern French armorial plates, they are neither numerous nor especially characteristic. Some of the neatest amongst them are signed Stern, graveur, Paris, and in their formality and clearness resemble our own modern heraldic work.
But it is in the light, graceful plates of to-day that we find the fullest development of French art and originality. They style them Ex-Libris de Fantaisie. They illustrate the transient humour of the owner, his caprices, his studies, or his recreations; they obey no rule, they elude analysis or classification, they defy description:
“Their beauties are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed!
Or, like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever.”
