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George-Daniel de MONFREID

[Victor SEGALEN]

Les Immémoriaux - Bois dessiné, gravé et tiré par George-Daniel de Monfreid. Projet de frontispice du roman de Victor Segalen

s.d. (1907), sujet : 12,4x18,9cm, planche : 18,5x26,9cm, une feuille.

Les Immémoriaux – Woodcut drawn, engraved and printed by George-Daniel de Monfreid for the frontispiece of Victor Segalen's novel
 

Woodcut drawn and engraved by George-Daniel de Monfreid, in black on onion skin paper. Original proof, likely unique. Handwritten Annotation by the artist (“state 5”) in bottom margin, in pencil.
Original print run of a woodcut in black inspired by the work of Gauguin and engraved by George-Daniel de Monfreid for a frontispiece project, remaining unpublished, of Victor Segalen's Les Immémoriaux.
This engraved woodcut was to illustrate, as a frontispiece, the original edition of Segalen's Les Immémoriaux, an ethnographic novel, directly inspired by his trip to Polynesia following in Gauguin's footsteps. Segalen, therefore, asked the painter's follower and closest friend to produce it, to whom he also offered Noa Noa, bought in Papeete during the auction sale of Gauguin's goods. A mutual friendship and admiration was then born between Segalen and Monfreid under the tutelary aegis of the late painter. It is also in constant reference to the Master, that the two friends produce this frontispiece, to which Segalen attached great importance but which he will be obliged to abandon due to publishing costs:
“This is a lot more interesting for me: what will you do for my plate? If I dared to imagine something, it would be a formidable full-face figure, very plain, very worn, and of an androgyne with male tendences; in short, the Maori type described by Gauguin in his Noa Noa and produced by him in the carved wood that remained in Tahiti (face of a woman comparable to that which you possess) and of which I gave you a photograph I believe. [...] Are you in favor of reserving your frontispiece for luxury and friends' copies or of prostituting it in current copies? Allow me to renew a timid desire, expressed at your Vollard exhibition: if you print some more proofs from your color engravings, in pochoir, do not forget me.” (Brest, 2 November 1906).
 
Monfreid's response, 8 January 1907: “I have started looking for your plate. Ah! I will not describe it to you yet: it does not come according to what your book should evoke. Besides, I am not rich in imagination, let alone in “symbolism”, I remain – as you have noticed – a “naturalist” (but not a “realist”) and to summarize the impression of your Les Immémoriaux, one would have to be Gauguin. Finally, even so, I am not losing hope of doing something; only that I need a little more time to study it...”.
Monfreid will produce two trial woodcuts – whose sizes (22 x 12 cm and 23 x 16 cm) were not adapted to the edition – each time using the same formidable and frustrated figures Segalen wanted. Our woodcut seems to be the final version of these studies, perfectly adapted to the in-12 format of Mercure de France. However, the illustration includes the name of the author at the top, yet Segalen, a naval officer, could not sign a novel and had to choose a pseudonym, Max-Anély. This constraint may have contributed to this much-desired frontispiece being abandoned. However, in all likelihood, it was validated by the two trial woodcuts. Monfreid will also use the same male face to produce the ex-libris requested by Segalen.
In his letter dated 2 November, the poet already imagined a confidential print for Monfreid's work. In the end, only two color copies of this proof, enhanced in gold, seem to have been preserved, the second being today in the collections of the Musée Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
 
Only two other original color proofs (the second one is preserved at the Musée Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye), are known to date.