Edouard Elzingre
Born in 1880.
Died in 1966.
Édouard Elzingre stands out as a versatile practitioner of drawing, poster art and illustration. His documented oeuvre centres on historical and military subjects and equestrian scenes (posters, illustrations for historical publications, recurring motifs).
He first trained at the École d’art in La Chaux-de-Fonds from 1895 to 1899 under Charles L’Éplattenier. From 1899, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Emmanuel Frémiet is named as his teacher.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, he became increasingly connected with Geneva: from 1906, he collaborated with the Atar printing works on the production of posters and illustrations, and in 1907 he settled permanently in Geneva. Alongside his work as a poster artist and illustrator, he worked as a press artist from 1910 for publications such as the Messager boiteux de Vevey and, later, the Tribune de Genève.
His official commissions included producing postcards in 1914 for the festival celebrating the centenary of Geneva’s entry into the Swiss Confederation.
Elzingre became known for his illustrations for historical publications: he is credited in particular with the images for La nuit de l’Escalade by Alexandre Guillot (1915), followed by those for Le siècle de la Réforme à Genève (1917) and La Restauration genevoise (1919). In 1915, his watercolours were included in a presentation at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, attesting to the local visibility of his painterly work at that time.
The themes he addressed — which also recur in the bodies of images attributed to him — emphasise Geneva’s history, with particular prominence given to the Escalade, as well as military subjects and equestrian compositions.
