Investigations

In a dialogue from Lost Illusions, Honoré de Balzac gives "information that will not be out of place in a work whose material existence is due as much to paper as to the press"

Autograph letter signed addressed to his mother by a fading Baudelaire: “L'état de dégoût où je suis me fait trouver toute chose encore plus mauvaise” N. p. [Bruxelles] Sunday morning 14 [August 1864], 13,4 x 20,6 cm, 3 pages on a folded leaveAutograph letter signed in black ink, addressed to his mother and dated “Sunday morning the 14th.” A few underlinings, deletions and corrections by the author.Formerly in the collection of Armand Godoy, n°188.

On 16 April 1917, Picasso visited Pompeii with Jean Cocteau and Léonide Massine to prepare the ballet Parade, the first work described as "sur-realist" by Guillaume Apollinaire, created for the upcoming season of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. This initiatory journey inspired, upon his return, a monumental painting: the stage curtain for Parade, a true visual signature of the ballet that marked the beginning of Picasso’s neoclassical period and is now held at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou.

Join us in a deep dive into the holistic thought of the Marquis de Sade's cousin who embraced all the fields of knowledge. An accomplished scientist and tide expert, the Chevalier de Sade was also a harsh critic of Necker's economic theories. Just like his illustrious relative, he reinvented the world from the bottom of a jail...

Very rare and sought-after first edition of one of the most important autobiographical works in the history of French literature, masterpiece and major work by George Sand.

A young romantic painter, a libertine wife, a workshop with the scent of an alcove, the nicknames of secret lovers, a mysterious passion and an unfinished child's portrait.Enter the painter's loving intimacy and discover the true name of "the Italian lady", the young Delacroix's burning secret passion.From the love of art to the arts of Love, Eugene trades the brush for the pen and writes - anonymously - letters imprinted with spleen and ideal, in which he "plunges his soul into oblivion without remorse , and, carrying the vertigo, the failing rolls to the shores of death! »

Felice Beato (1833-1908) arrived in Japan in 1863, at the invitation of his friend Charles Wirgman (1832-1891), illustrator and journalist for the Illustrated London News, whom he met in China some years previously when, as a military reporter, he covered the Second Opium War. This Chinese period, during which he also put together photograph albums, influenced his work in Japan.

"You are the only Algerian writer to have thought that this news, the importance of which I do not exaggerate, could affect me at a time when all my anguish is directed towards Algeria."

Two years after The Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire confidentially published a "literary notice" on Gautier for which he obtained a preface letter from Victor Hugo. Under its appearance of simple panegyric of the impeccable poet, this unique literary collaboration is the place of a major ideological fight between the two immense poets who sign here their respective manifestos: that of the art for the art against that of the art for the progress. Discover, through this exceptional copy offered to Paul Meurice, close friend of the two giants, the story of this tempestuous meeting between the Albatross and the Ocean Man.