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Maître Jean Emmanuel PRUNIER
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[MANUSCRIPT] [FINE ARTS] Félix FENEON – Les hommes d’aujourd…
See original version (French)
71
-
[MANUSCRIPT] [FINE ARTS] Félix FENEON – Les hommes d’aujourd…
See original version (French)
Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
Voluntary lot
Description
[MANUSCRIPT] [FINE ARTS] Félix FENEON – Les hommes d’aujourd’hui – Paul Signac An exceptional, complete manuscript of a draft version of the famous text on Signac’s work by the visionary art critic Félix Fénéon. A document of great importance, in a period binding of cardboard and marbled paper, with a plain spine bearing a gilt title, and some damage to the spine. 18 pp., front-side only, all mounted on tabs at the time; signed by Félix Fénéon on the last page. Hinges slightly weakened; some cardboard missing from the spine. Waterstains; pages slightly soiled. Each page is carefully numbered in red; the text is set in the right-hand column, leaving the left-hand column blank (a few annotations and remarks have been added there on pages 3, 5, 8, 13, 15, 16 and 17). The first page contains a valuable 10-line paragraph in red, placed as a heading, providing instructions to the publisher and/or printer for the correct layout. Above all, there are significant variations between this manuscript and the known published version: at least 10 turns of phrase have been altered; indeed, some of these corrections can be found in the author’s own handwriting in this manuscript; and, more importantly, two passages were ultimately deleted: thus, on page 3, ‘If they are of unequal saturation and luminosity: the more saturated one gains in intensity, the less saturated one fades; the brighter one becomes even brighter, the dimmer one darkens; – which can be summarised, somewhat loosely, by saying that the lighter one becomes lighter, the darker one darker: contrast of tones.” From this paragraph, only the last sentence was retained: “The lighter one becomes [...] contrast of tones.” And on pages 4–5: “We have distinguished between the various factors contributing to colouration: local colour, solar orange, normal irradiation of complementary colours, and accidental reflections. - We know, moreover, that when coloured light (or light-colour) falls on a pigment, the role of absorption in producing the final hue is virtually nil: this hue results from a true mixture of light-colours, or optical mixing. (For example, in yellow light, ultramarine paper will appear white [corrected to ‘whitish’ directly on the page] and not green.)” This passage has been completely omitted from the published version. Published in 1890 in *Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui*, this portrait of Signac by Fénéon appeared at a time when Neo-Impressionism was still seeking recognition of its legitimacy. Fénéon had already played a decisive role in defining the movement, notably with *Les Impressionnistes* in 1886. Here, however, he develops a portrait-manifesto of Neo-Impressionism. This portrait of Paul Signac goes beyond a mere biographical sketch to contribute to the defence and legitimisation of an avant-garde aesthetic. Fénéon helped to situate Signac’s art within a new conception of painting, based on a renewal of the relationships between colour, light and perception. A staunch anarchist, Félix Fénéon was one of the first advocates of Georges Seurat and played an important role in the reception of his work, and subsequently that of Paul Signac, who, for his part, shared many of his anarchist ideas.
See original version (French)
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Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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