La Fontaine de Sang, Les Fleurs du Mal

Details

Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959)
La Fontaine de Sang, Les Fleurs du Mal
signed 'Epstein' (lower right)
pencil
22 x 17 in. (56 x 43.2 cm.)
Executed circa 1936.

Provenance

with Tooths, London.
The Edward & Barbara Schinmann Collection, New Jersey.
with Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco.
with Souffer Gallery, New York.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 2 March 1988, lot 166.

Literature

C. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, New York, 1940, illustrated.
E.P. Schinmann and B. Schinmann, Jacob Epstein, A Catalogue of the Collection of Edward P. Schinmann, New Jersey, 1970, p. 119, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Jacob Epstein, Sculpture and Drawings, Leeds, City Art Gallery, 1987, p. 203, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Jacob Epstein 1880-1959, Bronze Sculptures, Les Fleurs du Mal drawings and other works on paper, London, Boundary Gallery, August 2002, p. 14, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Tooths, 1938, catalogue not traced.
Rutherford, New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Sir Jacob Epstein's work from the Collection of Mr Edward P. Schinmann, 1967, catalogue not traced.
Leeds, The Henry Moore Centre, Leeds City Art Gallery, Jacob Epstein, Sculpture and Drawings, 1987, no. 105; this exhibition travelled to London, Whitechapel Art Gallery.
London, Boundary Gallery, Jacob Epstein 1880-1959, Bronze Sculptures, Les Fleurs du Mal drawings and other works on paper, June - August 2002, no. 15.
Aldeburgh, Peter Pears Gallery, Festival Exhibition, June 2006, no. 17.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal is a collection of 125 poems published in 1857. In 1936 Epstein was commissioned by George Macy, founder of the Limited Editions Club, to illustrate these poems and he subsequently considered these drawings to be among his most accomplished works, 'I believe only six or seven drawings were wanted, but when I started reading the text with a view to illustrating it, I found the subject so absorbing I made sixty drawings. I believe Mr Macy, who originally asked me to make the drawings, was somewhat taken aback at this over measure ... In these drawings I had tried to represent the spiritual, religious and ecstatic sense of the poems with their tragic and sombre shades, avoiding for the most part those cheap sensual interpretations in illustrations so commonly found in volumes of the Fleurs du Mal.' (see Sir Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography, Art Treasures Book Club, London, 1955, p. 163).

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