Fernand Léger, Arthur Rimbaud and Les Illuminations.

Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

Original signed drawing – Rimbaud, 1948.

Black ink and gouache on vellum paper.

Signed and dated in the lower right margin: FL 48.

Titled in the lower margin at the center: RIMBAUD

On the back, a handwritten inscription, dated 1949, from the publisher Louis Grosclaude certifying the work (with his stamp):

Received this original gouache from Fernand Léger in Paris in 1949.

Format 42.50 x 34.50 cm. Tears in the left margin have been restored.

Light wood frame with crossed scrolls (69 x 59 cm)

We are enclosing the certificate of authenticity from the Fernand Léger Committee, referenced under number FL-2022-07-000373. The work will be included in the catalogue raisonné of the artist's works on paper.

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In 1948, the Swiss publisher Louis Grosclaude undertook a luxurious edition of Arthur Rimbaud's collection, Les Illuminations, and enlisted Fernand Léger for this purpose.

Léger, inspired by Carjat's famous photographic portrait of Rimbaud taken in October 1871, produced several studies in ink and gouache. With a lively, modern, and colorful style, the painter's work admirably echoes the avant-garde and liberated rhythm of the poet.

The book, with a preface by Henry Miller, was published by Éditions des Gaules in Lausanne in 1949 and features fifteen lithographic illustrations by Léger, including a portrait of the poet as a frontispiece.

The frontispiece study presented here was not accepted by the publisher Grosclaude. A few similar preparatory sketches by Léger are known; one of them is held at the Rimbaud Museum in Charleville-Mézières.

Of the rejected studies we are aware of, this one is the largest and most colorful. It is also the only one that combines ink and the colors green, blue, and yellow with that intense red typical of the painter's palette in the 1940s.

Rimbaud's face, conveyed by Carjat's photograph and Léger's brushstrokes, has acquired iconic status. Indeed, it is around these adolescent and rebellious features that the entire Rimbaud mythology has been constructed.

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