Lot n° 111
Estimation :
10000 - 15000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 13 000EUR
GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896). - Lot 111
GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896).
autograph manuscript, Japanese Notes. Hokusai, [ca. 1895-1896]; 201 ff. in-12 in 6 small quires (ca. 16.5 x 11.3 cm), all bound in one in-12 volume, bradel of ivory vellum with overlays (contemporary binding, spine label missing).
Precious preparatory manuscript of his essay on the life and work of Hokusai, the great master of Japanese printmaking.
Hokusai (1896), a cult book, represents a fundamental step in the history of art, at the crossroads of Japonism and Impressionism. A pioneering work, Hokusai exerted an extraordinary influence in the West as well as in Japan, and still remains a reference work. The first serious monograph on a Japanese artist, it was read by French painters - Monet owned a copy - as well as by the Japanese themselves, for whom it provoked the birth of modern art criticism. Hokusai marked the apogee of Japanese art, a source of renewal for Western painting. Admiration for Japanese art grew after the country was reopened to the West in the mid-19th century. Prints, especially those of Hokusai, had a lasting influence on the style of French artists - many of whom were collectors - such as Bonnard, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Vuillard... Edmond de Goncourt, a passionate art lover, was a Japanese enthusiast from the start: he assembled one of the first collections of Japanese prints in France, and conceived the ambitious project of a veritable encyclopaedia of ukiyo-e, of which Hokusai is the only true and perfectly completed volume.
On May 25, 1888, Goncourt wrote in his Diary: "I would like to write a book on Japanese art in the style of the one I wrote on the art of the eighteenth century, a book less documentary, but a book even more pushed towards the penetrating and revealing description of things. And at the beginning of his book, he declared: "Today, I give for the first time, in a European language, the unknown biography of Hokusai, the greatest artist of the Far East.
The notebooks are numbered from 1 to 4, with numbers 3 "(double)" and 4 "(double)". These are first draft notes, in ink. Almost all the paragraphs have been crossed out by Goncourt with vertical lines in blue pencil to indicate that he used them in his book; a few rare notes are written with the same blue pencil. There are five original sketches in these notebooks. This manuscript also contains some autograph notes from his friend and Japanese art dealer Tadamasa HAYASHI. This art dealer, a friend of Monet and Degas, was a major player in the Japanese-European artistic dialogue; one of the first French-speaking Japanese, he became one of the greatest Japanese art dealers in the world. He was an ardent defender of this art in France (and in Japan itself, where prints were not highly regarded at the time), but also the introducer of impressionism in Japan. This preparatory manuscript of Hokusai thus reveals the collaborative work between Goncourt and this Japanese scholar, Tadamasa HAYASHI, who himself wrote a few notes (about a tenth of the text). To get around the language barrier, as well as to learn about the great private collections, Goncourt worked with Tadamasa Hayashi, exchanging a fruitful correspondence, but above all by having him come to his house in Auteuil. Goncourt's bookish knowledge of Japan was transformed by Hayashi's insights; he was able to give the first definition of many Japanese terms (including ukiyo-e), and to supplement his bookish sources.
Goncourt has gathered in these notes as much biographical information about Hokusai as possible, copies of his letters, and texts about him. He gave a detailed description of all Hokusai's albums, prints and drawings (sometimes with dimensions), with dates and signature labels. Goncourt sometimes wrote down questions to ask Hayashi, who often answered them himself in his own handwriting.
The fourth notebook is entitled "Sourimonos and Drawings", with this note: "to see if a piece should be made on Hokusai's drawing - from nature or from memory".
Let us quote some brief passages from these notebooks. "And Hokousai's drawings very strong without halftones, with a large bright part, and the shadow constricted and pink". "Woman reading a play with her head lowered a little lowered, the woman's colouring a little like a pierrot, but in a dress with changing tones, sown with flowers on which the greenish tone of the belt slices through the geometric yellow design, a bird flying over her head"
One of the few notes not crossed out: "watercolours with a curious bariolage, the yellows in a flat and plain tint throughout, but brushstrokes leaving all the lights in a pink tint, a blue tone made by the white of the paint".
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue