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Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire (Solange Milet 33)
Details
Louis Marcoussis (1883-1941)
Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire (Solange Milet 33)
etching, aquatint and drypoint, 1912-20, sixth (final) state, on Arches laid paper, initialled in pencil, dedicated in the lower right corner 'A Camedo (?) avec toute affection son ami Marcoussis', numbered 30/30 (the edition of thirty is made up of ten impressions of the 5th state, and 20 of the 6th state), with margins, some discoloration, some scattered foxing mainly in the margins, on the reverse some backboard staining and some old brown paper tape at the sheet edges, framed
P. 497 x 277 mm., S. 615 x 395 mm.
Portrait de Guillaume Apollinaire (Solange Milet 33)
etching, aquatint and drypoint, 1912-20, sixth (final) state, on Arches laid paper, initialled in pencil, dedicated in the lower right corner 'A Camedo (?) avec toute affection son ami Marcoussis', numbered 30/30 (the edition of thirty is made up of ten impressions of the 5th state, and 20 of the 6th state), with margins, some discoloration, some scattered foxing mainly in the margins, on the reverse some backboard staining and some old brown paper tape at the sheet edges, framed
P. 497 x 277 mm., S. 615 x 395 mm.
Special notice
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Further details
Begun in 1912, this second portrait of Wilhelm de Kostrowitsky, known as Guillaume Apollinaire, was left unfinished during the war and then resumed and finally finished in 1920, after the poet's death. Marcoussis would later complete another three portraits of Apollinaire: a lithograph published in a special separate number of L'Esprit Nouveau (M. 38), a woodcut (M. 43) and an etching featured in the album Eaux-Fortes pour "Alcools" (M. 113). In the same album the figure of Apollinaire also appears represented incarcerated in the prison La Sante (M. 144 and 145).
A text by Marcoussis, written at the bequest of the Belgian collector René Gaffé, is illustrated with a sketch showing the poet. The artist writes of the circumstances in which Apollinaire, after much hesitation, had first decided to name his collection of poetry Eau-de-Vie (a type of French Schnapps) and had asked the artist to etch this title onto one of the books shown on the bookcase behind the large portrait in drypoint of 1912. This title would later be replaced by Alcools, much to the disappointment of the small cubist clan who met at the bar of Ami Emile, place Ravignan, and who reproached him for having abandoned the first title. Marcoussis, in this text, concludes: 'I admit that after twenty years, I prefer the title Alcools to Eau-de-Vie
(S. Milet, Louis Marcousis, Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Gravé, Copenhagen, 1991, p. 78)
A text by Marcoussis, written at the bequest of the Belgian collector René Gaffé, is illustrated with a sketch showing the poet. The artist writes of the circumstances in which Apollinaire, after much hesitation, had first decided to name his collection of poetry Eau-de-Vie (a type of French Schnapps) and had asked the artist to etch this title onto one of the books shown on the bookcase behind the large portrait in drypoint of 1912. This title would later be replaced by Alcools, much to the disappointment of the small cubist clan who met at the bar of Ami Emile, place Ravignan, and who reproached him for having abandoned the first title. Marcoussis, in this text, concludes: 'I admit that after twenty years, I prefer the title Alcools to Eau-de-Vie
(S. Milet, Louis Marcousis, Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Gravé, Copenhagen, 1991, p. 78)