Album de dessins originaux

Name: Album de dessins originaux
SKU: 27446
Price: 9000 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Sacha Guitry

Marcel Schwob, Laurent-Tailhade, Ernest La Jeunesse, Jules Renard, Alfred Edwards, Colette Willy

S.l.n.d. [1906].

1 notebook (35 x 25.5 cm) of 4 double leaves, India ink and pencil, with 1 vol. (255 x 355 mm) of 8 leaves on strong Arches paper.

“Unique copy made for Charlotte Lysès”: this album is made up of six original drawings, executed around 1906. The title cover is calligraphed in India ink by Guitry: it is followed by the portraits of Marcel Schwob, Laurent Tailhade, Ernest La Jeunesse [Mirbeau's secretary], Jules Renard, Alfred Edwards [director of the newspaper Le Soir], and Colette. This last portrait would be reproduced, reversed, on the cover of the edition of C'te Pucelle d'Adèle, published in 1910, and would become an iconic portrait of the writer, then still at the dawn of her career. This album of drawings remained unpublished until the edition issued in 2001, at the initiative of André Bernard, who published a hors commerce facsimile limited to 20 copies, of which we are joining copy no. V. It had previously been exhibited only once, in 1985, at the exhibition devoted to Guitry at the Musée du Luxembourg.

At the turn of the century, Lucien Guitry was the Tsar’s favorite actor. It was at his court that he was introduced, in 1905, to a young actress of 28, still a fresh newcomer: Charlotte Lysès, daughter of extremely wealthy bankers of Judeo-Moroccan origin, who kept a suite in a Parisian palace she owned, the Hôtel du Canada. “Guitry senior was convinced that this young lady had taken a fancy to the theater the way one takes a fancy to a hat. He preferred to put this gracious millionairess in his bed rather than in his plays, in which he would only entrust her with roles so insignificant that casting her in them bordered on rudeness.” She would repay him a hundredfold, moving from the father’s bed to the son’s. Sacha Guitry was seven years younger than this first wife, as wealthy as she was refined and cultivated. It was for her that he wrote his first real play, Les Zoaques, during 1906; it was also the year he composed this series of portraits of his close Parisian friends: Jules Renard, Laurent Tailhade and Marcel Schwob, of course, accompanied by two more “factual” portraits, those of La Jeunesse and Edwards, and one of Colette, whom he had first met in 1905. “The first time I saw her, she had long blonde hair, so long that she braided it and wore it in coils over her ears. She was truly charming then, with her triangular face, almond eyes and weasel-like nose.”

At this time, Guitry devoted himself extensively to drawing, producing several albums of portraits of his friends (the first being Des connus et des inconnus, in 1903, which already included Jules Renard), or of animals, such as Le Taureau, Le Veau, Le Maquereau, Le Chat, Le Lapin, Le Crapaud, La Vache, La Poule, published in 1906. All were issued in small numbers, for his friends.

We are joining the first edition of C’te Pucelle d’Adèle, which reproduces Guitry’s portrait of Colette on its cover. The volume was published by Ondet, at the end of 1909.

The present album, a unique piece never published, was shown in the exhibition Sacha Guitry et ses amis (Musée du Luxembourg, 1985, no. 2).

#27446

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