Portraits of Authors, Portraits of Artists

An original albumen carte-de-visite photograph of Eugène Delacroix, depicting the artist seated in a chair — his most famous portrait. The session at Pierre Petit’s studio yielded multiple poses; variants of this print survive at the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Mounted on card, with Pierre Petit’s signature in the lower margin and his studio advertisement on the verso.

Photographic portrait of Eugène Delacroix

Original photograph on albumen paper, in carte de visite format, mounted on a board. Some small foxing.

Rare copy of this photograph, only found at Carnavalet, Louvre and Orsay museums.

Ink and watercolour portrait of the poet Paul Verlaine by his friend Marie Crance, bearing the artist's signature and the handwritten caption “Paul Verlaine à l'hôpital”.

A single sheet, presented in a frame with a mount. An inscription on the back of the frame—“written in the margin (by the framer): ‘For Messrs. Thénot and Lercey, 25 April 1894’”—provides a likely terminus post quem for the drawing.
 
Marie Crance (1860–1945), nicknamed Marie-aux-fleurs, was at the time the companion of the illustrator Frédéric-Auguste Cazals, whom she married in 1912. A laundress, maid, and occasional singer in the poet’s favourite dives, she was also a loyal friend and caretaker to Verlaine. She tended his ailing leg when he avoided doctors and took refuge in modest hotels on the outskirts of Paris. Cheerful, unpretentious, and full of life, she also visited him during his hospital stays at Broussais, Tenon, Cochin, and Saint-Antoine, where she made this bust portrait of the poet—his piercing gaze and stiffened figure shaped by age and chronic rheumatism. Verlaine dedicated a sonnet to her in the second edition of Dédicaces, along with a charming drawing (Verlaine, Lettres inédites [...], ed. Georges Zayed, 1976, p. 45):
 
« Je veux donc dire de ma voix la mieux timbrée,
Et les tracer du bec de ma meilleure plume,
Vos mérites et vos vertus dans l’amertume
Douce de vous savoir d’un autre énamourée
Mais d’un autre... »
 
A moving portrait of the wandering poet, curiously resilient, his form dissolving into the softness of the watercolour.

Rare photographic portrait of Amélie Destouches, aunt of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, in cabinet card format on albumen print mounted on cardboard from Studio Louis.
Manuscript captions "Suzannica 3 ans, Bucarest ce 14 juin 1877" ["Suzannica 3 years old, Bucharest this 14th June 1877"] and "Zenon Zawirski" in another hand, on verso.
The portrait was taken by Studio Louis, at 127 Calea Mosilor in Bucharest.
 
At twenty-four, Amélie married the wealthy Romanian Zenon Zawirski, who poses beside her with their daughter Zenone Zawirska, then three years old. Céline devoted an unflattering portrait to her in Death on the Installment Plan, borrowing her features for the character of Aunt Hélène, whose Slavic adventures he transposed to Russia rather than Romania. Though still alive when the novel was written, Céline nonetheless had his character die in dishonor and shame:
"Elle a pris tout le vent dans les voiles. Elle a bourlingué en Russie. À Saint-Pétersbourg, elle est devenue grue. À un moment, elle a eu tout, carrosse, trois traîneaux, un village rien que pour elle, avec son nom dessus. Elle est venue nous voir au Passage, deux fois de suite, frusquée, superbe, comme une princesse et heureuse et tout. Elle a terminé très tragiquement sous les balles d'un officier. Y avait pas de résistance chez elle. C'était tout viande, désir, musique. Il rendait papa, rien que d'y penser. Ma mère a conclu en apprenant son décès : 'Voilà une fin bien horrible ?! Mais c'est la fin d'une égoïste ?!'" ["She caught all the wind in her sails. She knocked around Russia. In St. Petersburg, she became a whore. At one point, she had everything, carriage, three sleighs, a village all to herself, with her name on it. She came to see us at the Passage, twice in a row, dressed up, superb, like a princess and happy and all. She ended very tragically under an officer's bullets. There was no resistance in her. She was all flesh, desire, music. It made papa sick, just thinking about it. My mother concluded on learning of her death: 'What a horrible end?! But it's the end of a selfish woman?!'"]

Original photograph mounted on rigid cardboard, showing Fernand Destouches, father of writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline (top right) posing alongside his brothers René, Georges and Charles - from top to bottom and left to right.
Edges of the rigid cardboard slightly bumped.
 
This portrait of the four Destouches brothers in uniform with laurel collar, dates from their happy schoolboy years at the Le Havre lyceum. The photograph, a true incarnation of a carefree and bygone past, must undoubtedly have held importance in the eyes of the four brothers, who would reproduce as adults the exact pose of this childhood portrait for a second, family portrait, preserved in the collection of François Gibault (Anton, Sonia, « Louis-Ferdinand Céline, d'un Havre à l'autre : entre autofiction, transposition et imaginaire », Le Territoire littéraire du Havre dans la première moitié du XX^è siècle, 2013, fig. 20, photograph taken around 1905).
 
Our photograph is reproduced on page 11 of the Album Céline (Gallimard, 1977).

Extremely rare original photograph showing Charles Baudelaire on albumen paper, contemporary print in carte de visite format, mounted on a board from the Nadar workshop, 35 boulevart (sic) des Capucines; “Photographic portrait for us taken by Nadar. Taken the same day as the previous one, same dimensions, same clothes. The waistcoat is still unbuttoned but Baudelaire hides his hands in the pockets of his trousers. Seen face on, he seems more troubled and sadder than in the previous attempt.” (Ourousof, 1896)
“Another carte de visite from the same day as the previous no. 41 [...] a contemporary albumen print found in the Musée d'Orsay collections (Provenance: from the Braive collection, then the Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes collection, 1991, acquired by the Musées Nationaux with the support of the Heritage fund [...] Musée d'Orsay, fiche 39389) (S. Plantureux, Charles Baudelaire ou le rêve d'un curieux).
This photo, taken in 1862, was sold between 1862 and 1871, as evidenced by the photographer's address on the back of the board. Only two of Baudelaire's poses seem to have been retained from this session.
“If photography is allowed to replace art in some of its functions, it will soon have replaced or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the natural alliance it will find with the multitude of nonsense” wrote Charles Baudelaire in the Salon de 1859.
We know of only fifteen different photographic portraits of Baudelaire, taken between 1855 and 1866 (three sessions at Nadar, three at Carjat and one at Neyt), for some of which there remains only one copy.
Baudelaire and Nadar met in 1843 and their friendship endured until the poet's death in 1867. The photographer shot a total of seven portraits of his friend between 1855 and 1862. The two men, full of admiration for one another, paid each other moving tributes in their respective works: Baudelaire dedicated “Le rêve d'un curieux” “The dream of a curious man” (in Les Fleurs du Mal) to the photographer, who dedicated to him, in addition to the photographic caricatures and portraits, an unvarnished work titled Charles Baudelaire intime: le poète vierge (1911).

Extremely rare and beautiful copy of this little-known photograph of Baudelaire by the most important French photographer of the 19th century.

Original albumen photograph, cabinet card format, mounted on yellow cardboard bordered in red by Nadar, with his stamp on verso, rue d'Anjou St-Honoré.
Portrait of the actress leaning on her elbow, face resting in the hollow of her hand, looking at the photographer or at whoever looks at the photograph, with a melancholic expression. Very fine photograph. Photographs of Sarah Bernhardt are most often in stage costume, performing, those representing her naturally, which are older and where she appears younger, are much rarer. The actress remained quite faithful to the photographer as we find several portraits of her from her debut until around 1900.
Manuscript annotation on verso.