VERLAINE PAUL (1844-1896)

Lot 105
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6000 - 8000 EUR
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Result : 7 150EUR
VERLAINE PAUL (1844-1896)
Four-legged quadrille with self-portrait. Original drawing, signed with his initials, with handwritten caption "Quadrille à quatre pattes". [Circa 1869]. Ink and pen, 20.5 x 26.4 cm. Portrait of the composers Charles de Sivry and Emmanuel Chabrier playing the piano with four hands. This scene was no doubt inspired by the amusements that took place on rue Chaptal in the salon of Nina de Villars (Anne-Marie Gaillard), to which Emmanuel Chabrier and Charles de Sivry were accustomed. In Souvenirs sans regrets (1897-1898), Sivry speaks of the "terrible quadrille" which one evening ended in a summons to the police station. Mathilde Mauté, Verlaine's wife and Sivry's half-sister (who also frequented the salon of Nina de Callias), evokes precisely the present caricature in Mémoires de ma vie (1935): "I also have from [Verlaine] an amusing drawing representing Chabrier and Sivry at the piano". A friend of Verlaine, the composer Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) met the poet in 1864 in the Parnassian circles he himself frequented as a lover of art and literature. Like Verlaine at Nina de Villars', he was a marvel at his comicality. He whom Vincent d'Indy nicknamed "the angel of comedy", and whom Debussy recognised as "wonderfully gifted by the muse of comedy", conceived with Verlaine two operettas left unfinished in 1864, Fisch-Ton-Kan, and the parody of Napoleon III Vaucochard et fils Ier. Verlaine dedicated a poem to him in Amour in 1888, which was reprinted in Dédicaces in 1890: "A Emmanuel Chabrier" "[...] Your genius was improvising at the piano, and it was all around like a burning ring of sympathy and friendly ease that radiates [...]". Brother-in-law and great friend of Verlaine, the musician Charles de Sivry (1848-1900) was the son of a pianist who counted Debussy among her students. He himself became a piano teacher, conductor at the Bal Robert and then at the Théâtre des Délassements, and served as an accompanist at the Chat Noir cabaret and then
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