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, of which Le Maillot is a perfectly preserved example. 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. In Le Maillot, an old distinguished gentleman observes a young attractive and naked woman while getting dressed. The gentleman holds his fold up hat in the pose of a phallus (recalling the mythological depictions of the God Priapus, often depicted with an exaggerated disproportionate permanent erection) while he observes the young woman putting on her stockings......a typical subtle though clearly ambiguous scene by Rops. The model's bra with wings obviously refers to Psyche, youngest of three sisters and goddess of the soul, whose beauty surpassed Aphrodite (Venus), mother of Eros (Cupid). Born a mortal, she gained immortality after four trials and tribulations to be together with Eros..
It is well possible Rops drew inspiration from the painting Nana by Éduard Manet (1832-1883) where a young woman is getting dressed in a blue room in front of her mirror while being observed by a gentleman with hat while holding his cane (most probably also an erotic allusion).[3] Manet exhibited the painting in 1877 at boulevard des Capucines in Paris as it was rejected for the official Salon due to the painting's subject and nature. Where Manet shows us the woman facing ourselves as the spectator of the painting, Rops puts his naked woman into direct contact with the gentleman, giving him a provocative, dangerous, manipulative and misogynistic look. 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, Le Maillot number 109 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....
Rops also engraved Le Maillot.[4]
Recently we sold another 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] Éduard Manet, Nana.
Oil on canvas, 154 x 115 cm.
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, inv. no. HK-2376
[4] Félicien Rops, Le Maillot.
Héliogravure, rehaussé de coulers à la poupée, 192 x 130 mm.
Exteens 916, Mascha 988.
[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
