?Portrait d?Arthur Rimbaud à 17 ans d?après Étienne Carjat?. [?Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud at 17 after Étienne Carjat?]. I.

HUGO (Valentine).

About this Item

Original lithograph (22.9×17.8 cm) in a gilt and black wood box frame (109 x 89 cm.) and passepartout surrounded by 19 b&w photographs taken by the artist in Charleville, accompanied by a pencil note with the artist's name and old Paris address in her hand. The print laid down and the photos and note pinned on to black cloth under the edges of drawing pins. The print is probably from 1954. £5,500.00 Very good condition indeed. Provenance: assembled from Hugo's personal effects in her apartment on Paris's Rue de Sontay, lot 109 (part of), Collection Pierre Spivakoff: l'Univers de Valentine Hugo. An assemblage of a great print, taken from the famous Etienne Carjat photo, with other photos all around dedicated to the poet's youth in Charleville. Rimbaud had a massive creative influence on Hugo who had a long and enduring creative fascination with the ?poe?te maudit' , who E?luard called the 'guy from Charleville' . In 1933, she painted ?Oui, j'ai les yeux ferme?s a? votre lumie?re. Je suis une be?te, un negre' a large oneiric oil portrait of him entwined with a long necked swan (Cocteau called Hugo the 'swan of Boulogne-sur-mer'' ), that was embedded with rhinestones and the seal of Menelik II of Ethiopia. Hugo produced an engraving for ?Les sept visages d'Arthur Rimbaud' that incorporated this motif from the painting in 1934. Three years later she supplied studies for the prints ?Aube' and ? Les Corbeaux ' for exhibition at Maggs Bros, Paris in June-July of 1937 and also produced seven wonderful drypoints for a 1938 edition of Rimbaud's ?Les Poe?tes de Sept Ans' (with at least one image of him walking around Charleville). Her print ?Ma Bohe?me' was a frontispiece to Enid Starkie's book on Rimbaud that was reproduced in Peter Quennell's TLS review of the book in May 1938. Charleville was Rimbaud's childhood hometown and he returned to it regularly throughout his life. In a brief aside, de Margerie notes that Hugo was asked to work on a tribute to Rimbaud that the municipality of Charleville put on, it is therefore likely that Hugo took these portraits for that homage. Indeed, a tinted version of this lithograph portrait appeared on the cover of a special edition of ?La Grive' in 1954, celebrating the centenary of Rimbaud's birth in the provincial town of Charleville. 243829 (THIS IS A VERY LARGE AND FRAGILE ITEM AND WILL NEED SPECIALIST SHIPPING WHICH WILL INCUR EXTRA COSTS TO THOSE QUOTED).

Seller Inventory # 243829

Bibliographic Details

• Title: ?Portrait d?Arthur Rimbaud à 17 ans d?après Étienne Carjat?. [?Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud at 17 after Étienne Carjat?]. I.
• Binding: Hardcover