Leducq Maison de Ventes aux enchères
189
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(Manuscript) – Ferdinand BAC. Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas the…
See original version (French)
189
-
(Manuscript) – Ferdinand BAC. Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas the…
See original version (French)
Estimate €120 - €180
Voluntary lot
Description
(Manuscript) – Ferdinand BAC. Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas the Younger, 1882–1890. 3 pp. in-4.
‘Part of Dumas the Younger’s life was devoted to the theatre, another part to antiques. Auctioneers had no better customer than him… Whenever I came down from my flat on Rue des Martyrs… I would go almost every day to the Hôtel Drouot, where I would meet Dumas the Younger and Mr Groult, often in the VIP area next to the auctioneer. Dumas, without any particular bias apart from quality, bought statuettes, paintings and trinkets which he piled up at home… Eventually, the masters’ canvases ended up propped against the leg of a chair… One of his luxuries was his writing paper, preferably azure blue… Russia was inextricably linked to his memories, through his stays there and his first marriage… Dumas made no secret of a sort of inexhaustible verve when he spoke of the aristocracy that gravitated around the Tsar and the imperial establishment. He had too firm a view of our morality—which is neither aristocratic nor bourgeois—not to be ironic about the way that world spent its time and money… ‘My father,’ Dumas would say, ‘used to claim that travel shaped one’s youth, but he would add: “The key is not to make the wrong sort of acquaintances… Oh! I’m not talking about the young ladies one might meet there. There are some very fine ones in every country…” ”
Ferdinand Bac (1859–1952), writer, illustrator, caricaturist and landscape painter—who is said to have been the grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte—was a man of many talents. A kind and refined man, a close friend of Empress Eugénie, he was a regular guest at the tables of all the prominent figures of the time, whom he sketched in numerous drawings that are still prized by collectors today.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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