DEGAS EDGAR (1834-1917).

Lot 28
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Estimation :
20000 - 25000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 35 100EUR
DEGAS EDGAR (1834-1917).
20 L.A.S. "Degas", [1885-1896], to Hortense HOWLAND; 39 pages in-8 and 5 pages in-12, 2 envelopes and 5 addresses (small cracks to some letters). Wonderful correspondence of friendship and romance, about her travels, her interest in photography, and her declining eyesight. [The beautiful Hortense HOWLAND (1835-1920) was born Delaroche-Laperrière, the daughter of a military subintendent. She had married a rich American industrialist, William Edgar Howland, from whom she later separated. She frequented the artistic and literary circles of Paris, won the undying love of Eugène Fromentin, and held a popular salon in her house at 16 rue La Rochefoucauld, where her neighbours Gustave Moreau, Degas, Ludovic Halévy, Guy de Maupassant, Robert de Montesquiou, Charles Haas and others frequented... Like Degas (who photographed her), she practiced photography. We can only give here a glimpse of this beautiful correspondence, which seems to be unpublished]. [Le Mans, August 1885] (on the letterhead of Colonel Méliodon). He regrets not having been able to see her before his departure: "There was both regret and shame in leaving you so soon, as soon as the game was over. But I couldn't stand it any longer, a kind of anger overcame me. [...] But I could not forget the big tears I saw you shed. And I laughed, my word, with spite". He describes the military maneuvers he witnessed: "I was running after the other batteries arriving at full gallop. The colonel laughed at me. An intoxicating spectacle of grace and harshness". He leaves for the Mont Saint-Michel. "My journey with dancers arouses laughter and envy. If they knew everything, the good people! [...] I kiss your hands affectionately"... Mont St Michel August 5th [1885]. "Never was a young man's journey better prepared and it is a fool who is doing it". From Mme Poulard's terrace, he evokes the joyful troop of dancers and entertainers that he accompanied to Paramé, recounting amusing encounters... "The English have left few traces here. [...] But they left some men in the delicious body of Miss X who was not afraid to splash around in the water all day yesterday"... Cauterets August 30 [1888] Hotel d'Angleterre. Dr. Évariste Michel examined him, "by congratulating me on the fast and good effect of the waters. [...] he owed me that, for the perfection of my obedience, the faith and punctuality that your grey bear deploys in these mountains". He is an "edifying" curist, drinking "voluptuously"... He hesitates to go and meet Charles Haas in Luchon... Cauterets September 6 [1888] Hôtel d'Angleterre. "I drink, I must drink in all weathers". He goes to see "for the 5th time" his "oracle" (Dr. Évariste Michel), whose little cottage he describes... "How good and forgiving you are with a bear, who only sucks your fingers because there is honey at the end! We see them here, big and small, dancing, but a little on the stick. [...] You get bored here when you're alone and doing nothing. This treatment overwhelms you a bit. I'm not trying to react, I'd be exhausted. He looked at the pictures taken by Mrs. Howland in Saint-Quentin: "The prints are perfect. I look at them many times a day. It makes me love Latour even more and you are the least of it"... Cauterets, Hôtel de France on Wednesday [August 1889]. He is well installed at the Hotel de France. He evokes various curists, and the memory of the "kind Haas"... "My treatment is over, if the desire to return to the studio is not too great, I would be able to run to Madrid to see the Museum... He thanks her for the photographs, "but it is the photographer who pleases me"... Cauterets, Hôtel de France on Wednesday [1889-1890 ?]. "Will the knight let himself be seen by my evil eyes, and if he sees that I see him, will he see me? The ladies' man cuts off the men. But does he know that I no longer see his women. [I drink and see no more"... He evokes with humour other curists... Saturday morning [September 1890]. "The beautiful hillsides of Burgundy are like emerald bumps, dear Madame, towards evening. And you are still in Louis XIV. Ah, long live the king's ass! But I am mistaken and confuse Dangeau with Fagon. The other day the Ménagère made an announcement in which it recalled that Mme de Sévigné complained to her daughter, her compère, of being badly shod and of not having a cute foot; which she would have had immediately, if she had been able to frequent the new shoe shop that has opened in the superb Bonne-Nouvelle palace. - You want the moral of this, here it is: it is that history is farther from us than the Fable, that it is more difficult for Mme de Sévigné to put on shoes for the Ménagère than for Cendrillon, and that the Thousand and One Nights is better reading for you, as it is for me, than all these stories of a society that is deader for us than for negroes. [...] Aristotle said: Po
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