Composition No. III by Raphael Collin, 1909 — digital reproduction

Year · 1909

Composition No. III by

A saffron-veiled dancer sways at the heart of a torchlit revel, arms lifted, her companions whirling in gauze around her while shadowed guests recline at the feast behind — this is Composition No. III by Raphael Collin, one of the images he painted for Pierre Louÿs's ancient-world novel Aphrodite.

Historical Reference

Raphael Collin (1850–1916) was a French painter of luminous, open-air allegories and nudes, but in Japan he is remembered above all as a teacher: Kuroda Seiki — later called the father of Western-style painting — together with Kume Keiichirō and Okada Saburōsuke trained in his Paris studio and carried his lighter palette and plein-air method home to the Tokyo Fine Arts School. That lineage is why a Collin belonged at the Exhibition of Modern French Painting mounted in Japan by the Franco-Japanese Art Society (Nichi-Futsu Geijutsu-sha), where this composition was shown. It is one of the forty-three images Collin made for the sumptuous 1909 Ferroud edition of Pierre Louÿs's Aphrodite, a bestselling Belle Époque novel of courtesans and revels in ancient Alexandria — its illustrations engraved in color on wood and printed on Imperial Japan paper.

About the Artwork

️ • This color reproduction holds Collin's dusky, honeyed palette intact: the central dancer glows in yellow gauze against cooler rose and green, her raised arms echoed by the veils swirling around her, while the background dissolves into the half-lit forms of guests reclining at a banquet. It preserves the soft, powdery grain of the original page and the gentle tonal haze Collin used to melt figures into their setting — the very atmospheric light his Japanese pupils carried home. Faint scratches and the warmed tone of century-old paper remain, the marks of its own long survival.

Original Condition

A Journey Through Time

This is not just a print—it's a piece of history that has traveled through a century, surviving wars, natural disasters, and the passage of time to land in your hands today. Unlike modern digital recreations that erase history's marks, we embrace every crease, stain, and faded edge as a testament to the journal's journey.

By owning this piece, you are not just buying an artwork—you are preserving a fragment of history, a lost vision of the world as it once was. Let this artwork serve as a bridge between time and space, allowing you to glimpse the beauty of a world before war, before destruction, before history took its cruel path. Your purchase helps continue our mission—to protect, share, and celebrate the art of the early 20th century.

How it works

01Buy.
02Download. Link appears immediately, also emailed.
03Print. Any home printer, framing service, or print shop.
04Frame and enjoy.

What you get

File: 1× JPG, high-resolution
Size: Print up to A2 (or larger, source dependent)
Delivery: Instant download · 14-day re-download window
Use: Personal use only
Returns: Digital item returns are not accepted. All sales final (terms)

Original archive scan. Folds, foxing, and patina preserved. Colours may vary slightly between screen and printer.

Filed under Nudes