Ex-libris d’André Breton

It was in his poem “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium,’” translated from English in 1922, that Robert Browning identified himself with the anteater, placid in its wait yet swift to seize its prey. André Breton quotes this poem in a letter to Dalí of 10 January 1931, before specifying the wording he wished to see on his bookplate: “the inscription to appear on the banderole of the ex-libris should preferably be, not ‘André le Fourmilier,’ but ‘André le Tamanoir’ (fourmilier is too generic. It is also something of a pleonasm on account of the ants. Finally, it is also used to designate rather mediocre animals).”

In the Catalan painter’s work, the tamanoir (giant anteater) appears as early as his first exhibition in 1929, at the Galerie Goëmans in Paris: the preface to the catalogue includes these lines by Robert Desnos: “Avez-vous vu le tamanoir? Ciel bleu, ciel gris, ciel blanc, ciel noir. – Avez-vous vu le tamanoir? Œil bleu, œil gris, œil blanc, œil noir. – Avez-vous vu le tamanoir? Vin bleu, vin gris, vin blanc, vin noir. Je n’ai pas vu le tamanoir! Il est rentré dans son manoir. Et avec son éteignoir, il a coiffé tous les bougeoirs, Il fait tout noir.”

A fine print, formerly and carefully framed.

It comes from the Bibliothèque André Breton and had been laid into his copy of the Œuvres posthumes de Vauvenargues (Paris, 1821), sold at the 2003 sale (lot 825). The title page of the volume has been preserved on the verso of the frame.