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72
GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896).
The item was sold for 724 €
Fees include commission and taxes.
GONCOURT Edmond de (1822-1896).
Ball scene
Ink and pen,
12, 5 x 15 cm, framed under glass.
A lively composition representing two dancers in Directoire costumes.
No doubt these are two of the "incredible and marvelous" to which the Goncourt brothers dedicated a piece now lost, or a more general evocation of the frenzy of pleasure that seized France after the fall of Robespierre, as they describe it in their monumental Histoire de la société française pendant le Directoire (1855): "France is dancing. She dances since Thermidor| she dances as she used to sing: she dances to take revenge, she dances to forget! Between her bloody past and her dark future, she dances! Barely saved from the guillotine, she dances so as not to believe in it anymore| and with her hock stretched, her ear to the measure, her hand on the shoulder the first to come, France, still bloody and ruined, turns, and pirouettes, and shakes in an immense and crazy farandole [...]. All these people rush to the ball. It lives the hour which is, stripping the memory, abdicating the hope| it gets drunk of noise, of lights, of stirred gauze, of warm smells, of shown breasts, of guessed legs, of glances, of forms, of sonorities, of the voluptuousness of senses [...]. One dances in fine shoes| one dances in big clogs| one dances to the nasal sounds of the musette| one dances to the sweet accents of the flutes| one dances while chanting the bourrée| one dances while jumping the anglaise! And the rich and the poor, and the craftsman and the boss, and the good company and the bad, all move with the best of their legs in this epidemic bacchanal which runs six hundred and forty-four balls! [...] But where the best company dances, where Madame Hamelin comes most often to bring her Creole graces, is at the Longueville Hotel [...]. There, in these majestic lounges like a gallery of the Louvre, thirty circles of contredanse to sixteen roll [...]. Three hundred perfumed and floating women, in their Venus-like undress, letting see all that they do not make see, impudent, "fine leg, fripon foot, elegant bodice, wandering hand, Armide's throat, Callipyge's form", on the arm of vigorous dancers, turn and turn again, tied to their Adonis, who stretch out a tireless thigh, drawn by the supple nankin. Under the golden cornices, a thousand mirrors repeat the smiles and the embraces, the clothes swept and moulding the body, and the marble breasts, and the mouths which, in the drunkenness and the whirlwind, open and bloom like roses! "Art will have filled our life" (Jules and Edmond de Goncourt)
Ball scene
Ink and pen,
12, 5 x 15 cm, framed under glass.
A lively composition representing two dancers in Directoire costumes.
No doubt these are two of the "incredible and marvelous" to which the Goncourt brothers dedicated a piece now lost, or a more general evocation of the frenzy of pleasure that seized France after the fall of Robespierre, as they describe it in their monumental Histoire de la société française pendant le Directoire (1855): "France is dancing. She dances since Thermidor| she dances as she used to sing: she dances to take revenge, she dances to forget! Between her bloody past and her dark future, she dances! Barely saved from the guillotine, she dances so as not to believe in it anymore| and with her hock stretched, her ear to the measure, her hand on the shoulder the first to come, France, still bloody and ruined, turns, and pirouettes, and shakes in an immense and crazy farandole [...]. All these people rush to the ball. It lives the hour which is, stripping the memory, abdicating the hope| it gets drunk of noise, of lights, of stirred gauze, of warm smells, of shown breasts, of guessed legs, of glances, of forms, of sonorities, of the voluptuousness of senses [...]. One dances in fine shoes| one dances in big clogs| one dances to the nasal sounds of the musette| one dances to the sweet accents of the flutes| one dances while chanting the bourrée| one dances while jumping the anglaise! And the rich and the poor, and the craftsman and the boss, and the good company and the bad, all move with the best of their legs in this epidemic bacchanal which runs six hundred and forty-four balls! [...] But where the best company dances, where Madame Hamelin comes most often to bring her Creole graces, is at the Longueville Hotel [...]. There, in these majestic lounges like a gallery of the Louvre, thirty circles of contredanse to sixteen roll [...]. Three hundred perfumed and floating women, in their Venus-like undress, letting see all that they do not make see, impudent, "fine leg, fripon foot, elegant bodice, wandering hand, Armide's throat, Callipyge's form", on the arm of vigorous dancers, turn and turn again, tied to their Adonis, who stretch out a tireless thigh, drawn by the supple nankin. Under the golden cornices, a thousand mirrors repeat the smiles and the embraces, the clothes swept and moulding the body, and the marble breasts, and the mouths which, in the drunkenness and the whirlwind, open and bloom like roses! "Art will have filled our life" (Jules and Edmond de Goncourt)