Fernand LÉGER, Arthur RIMBAUD and Les Illuminations.

Fernand LÉGER (1881-1955).

Original drawing signed – Rimbaud, 1948.

Black ink and gouache on wove paper.

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

Titled in the lower margin in 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 the hands of Fernand Léger in Paris in 1949.

Size 42.50 x 34.50 cm. Tears in left margin restored.

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

We attach the certificate of authenticity from the Fernand Léger Committee referenced under number FL-2022-07-000373. The work will appear in the catalog 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 called upon Fernand Léger for this purpose.

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

The work, prefaced by Henry Miller, was published by Éditions des Gaules, in Lausanne, in 1949 and presents fifteen lithographic illustrations by Léger, including a portrait of the poet on the frontispiece.

The frontispiece study presented here will not be retained by the publisher Grosclaude. A few rare similar preparatory projects by Léger are known; one is also kept at the Rimbaud Museum in Charleville Mézières.

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

Rimbaud's face conveyed by Carjat's photograph and by Léger's brush has acquired iconic value. It is in fact around these adolescent and rebellious traits that the entire Rimbaudian mythology has been stigmatized.

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