Drawing by Madeleine Lemaire and Letter by Fénéon — May 2020

The Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray presents two items recently added to the collections of the Musée Marcel Proust – Maison de Tante Léonie. The first is an original ink drawing by Madeleine Lemaire depicting a branch of chestnut trees (19.5 × 15.5 cm), an illustration made directly for the original edition of Les Plaisirs et les Jours (Calmann-Lévy, 1896). The second is an autograph letter from Félix Fénéon to Paul Signac dated 6 October 1932, generously given to the Société by Madame Charlotte Hellman.

One documents the genesis of a long-underrated edition; the other offers unprecedented testimony on the critical reception of Proust within artistic circles of the 1930s. Together, these two documents reveal how central the figure of the illustrator of Les Plaisirs et les Jours remained to debates over Marcel Proust's artistic taste, from the book's publication through the decades that followed the writer's death.

Overview

The pen-and-ink drawing acquired by the Association illustrates the text "Les marronniers," included in Les Plaisirs et les Jours and located by Proust himself: "Réveillon, October 1895." Executed in ink on bristol board (19.5 × 15.5 cm), it attests to the sureness of Madeleine Lemaire's line, a quality essential to the photogravure reproduction process used for the Calmann-Lévy edition. The Museum's collections already held two watercolours by the artist; this pen drawing makes it possible to appreciate her qualities as an illustrator, long obscured by the hyperbolic praise of her contemporaries and by a sometimes severe critical reception.

The letter from Félix Fénéon to Paul Signac, dated 6 October 1932, forms part of a correspondence initiated by Signac a few days earlier. Struck by the description of the painting attributed to the character of Elstir in À la recherche du temps perdu, Signac had concluded that Proust's taste was "sappy." In his reply, Fénéon takes care to separate Proust's fashionable attachment to Madeleine Lemaire from his true pictorial points of reference — Degas, Whistler, Monet, Renoir, Manet — while conceding that "his fondness for her was never more than a social concession." This letter substantially enriches the body of evidence concerning the visual sources of the Recherche.

Authors and Contributors

Anne Imbert, art historian trained at the École du Louvre (specialising in printmaking), member of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, writes the study devoted to the two acquisitions presented in this brochure.

Contents

• Madeleine Lemaire, Illustrator of Les Plaisirs et les Jours
• On Madeleine Lemaire: A Letter from Félix Fénéon in Reply to Paul Signac

Bibliographic Information

• Format: paperback
• Price: 4 €
• Publisher: Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray