Edouard Chimot

~ 1880 - 1959

Edouard Chimot was a French artist, illustrator and editor whose career reached its peak in the 1920s in Paris, through the publication of fine quality art-printed books. As artist his own work occupies a characteristic place, but as editor also his role was extremely important in bringing together some of the outstanding talents of that distinctive period in French art and providing the commissions upon which the development of their work in a formal context occurred.

Chimot studied under Jean-Baptiste Levert and Alexis Mossa at the École des Arts décoratifs in Nice, and then under Pharaon de Winter at the Beaux-Arts, Lille. The course of his early career is unclear. He seems to have first exhibited in 1912, rather late at the age of 32, and perilously close to the outbreak of World War I, which was to cause a four-year hiatus in his career, so that Chimot was 39 by the time he really made his mark on the Paris art world.
It seems possible that Chimot’s late start as an artist was because he initially trained as an architect.

In the years before the War Chimot had an atelier in Montmartre, haunted by “jeunes et jolies femmes” who served as his models. His first exhibition of drawings, etchings, and monotypes was in 1912; this was a success.
The crucial decade of his career was that between the end of World War I and the Wall Street Crash. It was during this time of frivolity and excess that Édouard Chimot created the haunting and compelling images by which his name will endure. In the last year of his life appeared a collection of 16 drawings of female nudes, Les Belles que voilà : mes modèles de Montmartre à Séville, which he regarded as a summary of his lifelong devotion to the female nude. 

Chimot had fallen in love with Spain while researching the illustrations for his edition of La Femme et le Pantin by Pierre Louÿs in 1928. During the Second World War, he and his wife Loulou (19 years his junior) took refuge from the war in the holiday house they had bought in Barcelona. Hence Chimot’s publications afterwards, appeared in Barcelona, and mostly illustrate Spanish-language texts. Chimot died in Paris in 1959.

When browsing his art some bdsm art works surfaced, so far I could not determine if Chimot illustrated for specific bdsm or spanking publications. I only add full book illustrations if there are more bdsm related artworks present in the book.

Illustrated books presented in gallery:

• Aphrodite (1928)

4 albums/25 artworks
Latest Update: March 23, 2024 -> Aphrodite, new album added

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