Born in a wealthy family, Félicien Rops got interested in Art already at young age, sketching and drawing in the blank margins of music scores while his father played Beethoven and Mozart. He abandoned his studies in Law and Philosophy and his artistic career begins with Rops' society-criticising satirical illustrations for Uylenspiegel, journal des ébats artistiques et littéraires (1853-1863).
In 1857 he marries Charlotte Polet de Faveaux (1835-1929), who inherits chateau Thozée, where Félicien hosts most of his artistic friends. Through the editor Auguste Poulet-Malassis (1825-1878) Rops is introduced to the famous etcher Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914) and Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), the latter who brings a radical change to his career. Together with his friend and colleague artist Armand Rassenfosse (1862-1934) Félicien develops the Ropsenfosse technique.
Rops had a love-hate affair with Paris where he would become one of the best-paid and most famous illustrators (Les Epaves, Les Diaboliques). He boasted to be even better paid than Gustave Doré (1832-1883). Every year he felt the urge to visit the artistic capital for some three months, after which he needed to recover from the sultry climate of the metropole. It is here in Paris, where he meets the sisters Léontine (1847-1915) and Aurélie Duluc (1852-1924), who became his maîtresses. The meandering rest to recover from Paris, Rops finds during travels to Swiss, Belgium, Scandinavia, Hungary, Spain, Holland, USA, Africa, Bretagne and Monaco where he recovers from the gloominess. It is here in the countryside, where Rops unwinds and draws his serene pure subjects, which form a welcome contrast to the feverish Parisian crucible.
Finally, Rops found his comfort in the countryside of Corbeil, where he bought the Demi-Lune, close to the river Seine. He died in 1898 surrounded by Léontine, Aurélie, his daughter Claire and his close friends Rassenfosse and Detouche.
Rops' Magnum Opus Les Cent Légers Croquis sans prétention pour réjouir les honnêtes gens (One Hundred light-hearted sketches without pretentions to rejoice the honourable people) (1878-1881) consists of two albums with a total of 114 drawings commissioned by the Parisian bibliophile Jules Noilly. In 1878 Noilly proposed Rops to create a spectacular corpus of hundred drawings (initially the idea was hundred drawings, which finally became a total of hundred and fourteen) meant as a manifest to denounce the contemporary hypocritical sexual morals or a Parodie Humaine. Extensive correspondence took place between Noilly and Rops in which the two kindred spirits shared their thoughts on the nature of the subjects to be drawn. Rops expressed in his early correspondence with Noilly he exclusively wished to work for a certain elite that understood and shared his artistic and society criticising ideals. For a small part of the corpus Rops used old drawings which he adjusted to match the nature of the subject to be expressed. The media varied from simple pen and ink drawings/sketches on papier calque to fully completed drawings in colour. For the fully finished drawings in colour he used a special kind of paper only to be sold by Méret at rue Dauphine. It took Rops three years to complete the series after which the drawings were bound together with a frontispice, an epilogue and ten poems of eacht ten lines introducing ten separate drawings. Rops produced these albums in the same period as his other Chefs-d'Oeuvre The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Pornocrates. The drawings were mounted in lightblue passé-partouts and bound into two albums by the famous bookbinder Marius Michel. After Noilly's death the albums were auctioned and the drawings got dispersed. Les Cent Légers...was Rops his major and most important commission.[1][2]
In Les Cent Légers....Rops invents and creates the female Modern Half Nude, which is his artistic vocabulary to impeach the hypocritical contemporary bourgeois morality. Finally, the series of drawings for Les Cent Légers.....appears to have been made with a Crescendo in mind....as one of the very last drawings, La Parodie Humaine (number 113 of 114) is the very Death himself disguised a prostitute, seducing a Dandy under the shady lantern lights of an alley....readily awaiting to infect the unsuspecting victim with the foremost disease of the Fin de Siècle....syphilus....
The present combination of a central print (a drypoint etching in this case) with remarque engravings or drawings in the blank margins (in our sheet a central print with two original drawings in the blank margins) is of typical French/Belgian origin. On this large sheet of simili-japon or Japanese velin, Rops has signed a fith state of the etched frontispice to the Catalogue de l'Oeuvre gravé de F. Rops by Erastène Ramiro (=Eugène Rouir), a close friend and collector of Rops. [3]
In the blank margins, Rops had drawn La Syrène, in which a man fishing from Pont Royal, Paris is drawn into the depths by a monstruous sirene while his wife screams for help. A purest example of mysogynism. On the lower margins, Rops drew a naked woman wearing a foolscap holding a devil's mask. Her body posture and finger adressing to the Devil closely resemble the series of drawings by the artist depicting the subject of La dame au Pantin, which were on long time loan to the Félicien Rops museum and have been purchased by the museum recently.
The Catalogue by Ramiro was first published in 1887 by Librairie Conquet, Paris in 1887, the year in which Rops drew his second edition of La Dame au Pantin, which dates our drawings in the year 1887 or shortly earlier as the drypoint is a fifth state of ten prior to the publication by Ramiro. A second edition was published in 1893, by the Brussels editor Edmond Deman, also close friend and avid collector of Rops. The subject of La Dame au Pantin was drawn several times by Rops in the years 1873, 1877 and 1885.
Rops also engraved La Sirene (La Syrène de Pont Royal) .[4]
Recently we sold a drawing from the collection of Jules Noilly, a self-portrait by Rops, dressed as chevalier. It was bound into a deluxe private-copy of Alfred Delveau's "Les Cythères Parisiennes. Histoire anecdotiques des bals de Paris", Paris, E. Dentu, 1864, with an etched frontispice and 24 plates on chine appliqué by Félicien Rops and Emile Thérond from the private-collection of Jules Noilly together with an autograph letter by Rops addressed to Jules Noilly, dated 2 May 1880. In the letter Rops apoligizes for not being home when his commissioner wanted to pay him a visit. The book with manuscript letter was sold together with the drawing to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.[5][6]
[1] Rops, Cent légers croquis sans prétention pour réjouir les honnêtes gens.
Musée Félicien Rops, Namur, 1998. p. 252, no. 109.
[2] Jules Noilly, Paris. His sale, "Catalogue de Livres Rares et Curieux, Anciens et Modernes et d'une précieuse collection de livres de L'ÉCOLE ROMANTIQUE composant La Bibliotheque de M.J. Noilly".
15 March 1886, lot 1046.
[3] Erastène Ramiro, Catalogue descriptif et analytique de l'œuvre gravé de Félicien Rops.
Librairie Conquet, Paris, 1887.
[4] Félicien Rops, La Sirene
Drypoint etching, 265 x 134 mm.
Exteens 7412, Ramiro 250, Mascha 723.
[5] Jules Noilly, Paris. His sale, "Catalogue de Livres Rares et Curieux, Anciens et Modernes et d'une précieuse collection de livres de L'ÉCOLE ROMANTIQUE composant La Bibliotheque de M.J. Noilly".
15 March 1886, lot 547.
[6] Félicien Rops (Namur 1833-1898 Essonnes), Self-portrait dressed as chevalier (1878-1881).
Black chalk on velin paper, 217 x 161 mm.
Signed with monogram "FR" in ligature.
Sold to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Inv. Nr.: 2022-26
