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“Yes I have sarcasm in my words, yes I do not know how to flatter and bend my back, how to beg in official salons […] I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted - yes I would be comfortable."

Long autograph letter dated August 1896 and signed by Paul Gauguin to painter Daniel de Monfreid. Four pages in black ink on two lined sheets.
Small tears to margins not affecting the text, traces of folds inherent to sending.
In the midst of his descent into hell, abandoned in his Tahitian artificial paradise, Gauguin feels cursed : “Definitely, I was born under a bad star.”, he laments. His quest for primitive freedom leaves him in destitution and misery. Suffering agony, the painter sends paintings to one of his few supporters, his faithful friend Daniel de Monfreid - but writes the wrong address...
Published in Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, 1918, p. 146, n° XXIII; our letter reveals the name of Émile Schuffenecker, his friend and associate on the Paris stock exchange and then Pont-Aven - anonymized in the published version - whom Gauguin vilifies on numerous occasions in these pages.
This exceptional missive was written in Tahiti, where the painter had returned the previous year, bidding a final farewell to the old Europe. Gauguin had just come out from a stay in hospital in Papeete to treat his bruised legs following the beating he had received in Concarneau two years earlier for defending his muse, Annah the Javanese. The painter could not escape the aftermath of this altercation and suffered from a terrible purulent eczema on his leg, as well as syphilis, drowning his torments in alcohol. The letter is a perfect example of Gauguin's correspondence from the summer of 1896 which "smells of the fever that has seized a mind overheated by pain and lack of sleep" (David Haziot). In his confusion, the painter misspelt the address of Monfreid's studio at the Cité Fleurie, a famous chalet-like artists' residence where Gauguin had stayed : “I sent you a bunch of paintings last month. I'm afraid for them because it seems to me that I put 55 Bd Arago instead of 65” This mailing included his composition Eihaha Ohipa, painted in his studio in Punaauia and now kept at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Shipped via a naval officer - fees to be paid by Monfreid - the paintings did not arrive until November. Beyond his feverish fears, Gauguin delivers in these lines a true manifesto of his integrity as an artist - the perfect counterpart to his famous Christlike self-portrait Near Golgotha, painted around the same period. To him, his destiny and generosity are nothing short of Christ-like: “in the most difficult moments of my life, I more than shared with unfortunate people and never had any reward other than complete abandonment”. He had in fact helped display Schuffenecker's paintings in Impressionist exhibitions, saved his friend Laval from suicide and opened his purse to so many others. Instead of returning the favor, Schuffenecker prefers to feel sorry for himself: “Schuff really wrote me a crazy and unfair letter and I don't know what to answer because he is a sick mind [...] he would be more unhappy than me who has glory, strength and health. Let's talk about it! I'm good at making others jealous, he says”. Gauguin, who had always refused to make concessions and compromise, is finally betrayed by one of his closest relations, Schuffenecker, who becomes in the letter a true Judas Iscariot: “Schuff has just made a useless petition, I believe, for the State to come to my aid. This is the thing that can offend me the most. I'm asking friends to help me out for the time it takes to get back the money I'm owed, and their efforts to recover it, but begging the State was never my intention”. The painter reaches a point of no return, not only bruised in his flesh, but also in his self-esteem: “All my efforts to fight outside the official arena, the dignity I have strived for all my life, are now losing their character. From this day I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted - yes I would be comfortable. Really, this is a sorrow that I didn't intend to have. Definitely, I was born under a bad star.” After this final abandonment, Gauguin gave free rein to his artistic and sensual frenzy in his Maison du Jouir in the Marquesas.
Suffering and penniless, Gauguin proclaims his distress and shattered pride - a Nabi Christ abandoning his cross, ready to fall into lust and the intoxication of the paintbrush.

Autograph letter dated and signed by Edgar Degas, addressed to the dealer Charles Deschamps, director of Durand-Ruel’s London branch. Three pages in ink on a bifolium.
Minor marginal tears not affecting the text, folds from mailing.
Recently returned from New Orleans, Degas writes to his London dealer to announce the imminent arrival of a delicate composition of dancers, Le Foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le Peletier, now held at the Musée d’Orsay: "In the meantime you will receive the little picture you saw in progress and which you had the idea of selling to Mr. Huth - May you succeed! [...] As for the price, it seems to me that £150 to £200 is fair" Deschamps fulfilled the painter’s wishes and sold the painting to Louis Huth, financier and patron of Whistler, for £140. The canvas would later enter the distinguished collection of Isaac de Camondo.
Degas turned towards London at a time when the English art market offered relief from the collapse that followed the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. He placed great hopes in this expanding British market, fuelled by lucrative blockbuster exhibitions drawing millions of visitors; Degas’s canvases were shown in eight exhibitions of the Société des Artistes Français. Although he often mentions financial difficulties in his correspondence "At the end of the month I have quite a lot to pay. If some money came in, I would be delighted [...] - Take care of me, my dear Deschamps, I would be most obliged - Tell me also if the season is not too far advanced. I fear it is" his career across the Channel was flourishing and his sales profitable. The painter does not fail to salute the "French colony" of expatriate artists, Giuseppe de Nittis and his close friend James Tissot, whose financial success provided Degas with an example of how effectively a French painter’s work could be marketed in England. Unlike Tissot, however, Degas refused to adapt to market taste, focusing instead on defending the Impressionist cause in France and abroad.
He also devotes a passage to a voracious collector of his works, the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, patron of his celebrated series of canvases on the Paris Opéra and owner of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe: "I ought to have been in London some time ago, according to what I said. I am not there because the picture for [Jean-Baptiste] Faure is not finished, and I would not like to meet him there without being able to give him better news, and I hardly have time to dawdle if I want not to arrive on the 1^st of September with nothing to deliver to him". Ironically, Faure would later reproach Degas for leaving his canvases unfinished (!) and even sue him a few years afterwards.
 
A rare and exceptional letter tracing the history of one of Degas’s celebrated works and his dealings with dealers and collectors, on the eve of the first Impressionist exhibition to be held the following year.

Complete collection in 36 issues (including three double issues) bound in three volumes - First year: 12 issues, from 8 February 1885 to 6 January 1886 - Second year: 12 issues, from 8 February 1886 to 15 January 1887 - Third year: 12 issues, from February 1887 to January 1888.
Illustrated with 4 full-page lithographs by Fantin-Latour: L'Évocation d'Erda - Odilon Redon : Brünnhilde - Jacques-Emile Blanche : Tristan et Isolde and Le pur-simple.
Three quarter brown morocco binding, smooth spine titled in gilt, marbled paper boards, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns, orignal wrappers preserved, binding signed by Dupré.
Numerous contributions from some of the most prominent writers, critics, poets and musicians of the late 19th-century, including Wagner himself: Charles and Pierre Bonnier, Jules de Brayer, Alfred Ernst, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Fourcaud, René Ghil, Stuart Merrill, Stéphane Mallarmé, Catulle Mendès, Éphraïm Mikhael, Pierre Quillard, Jean Richepin, Émile Hennequin, Charles Vignier, Charles Morice, Paul Verlaine, Villiers de l'Ilse Adam, Teodor de Wyzewa, Stewart Chamberlain, Gerard de Nerval (Souvenirs sur Lohengrin), Jean Ajalbert, Gabriel Mourey, Adolphe Jullien, Tola Dorian, Swinburne, Evenepoel, Franz Liszt...
A very valuable complete collection of this avant-garde journal, both literary and aimed at presenting Wagner's works through a new aesthetic.

First edition, one of 100 numbered copies on pure linen thread paper, the only deluxe copies.

Rare and handsome copy complete with its illustrated dust jacket which shows minor scuffs to head and foot of spine.

The work was adapted for cinema in 1957 by Phil Karlson with Dianne Foster and Richard Conte in the principal roles.