Paul VERLAINE dozing at the Globe café, in 1887, by Ferdinand BAC.

Ferdinand BAC (1859.1952)

Original signed drawing – Portrait of Paul Verlaine.

Charcoal on paper. 1887.

Size: 27 x 21 cm.

Signed on the lower left margin: “ F. Bac – eyewitness”

In the lower right margin, Bac titles and captions his sketch:

“Paul Verlaine dozing at the Café du Globe on Avenue de l'Observatoire with Henri d'Argis de Guillerville. 1887 »

___________________________________________

The doctor and writer Henri d'Argis de Guillerville (1864.1896) became friends with Paul Verlaine. In his Journal, Ferdinand Bac describes him as “a mutual friend from the Latin Quarter of 1880 […] a strange bohemian […] morphinomaniac, failed genius, rabble-rouser, poet, novelist, doctor, organist, living with Moréas and Verlaine. » D'Argis self-published his first novel Sodome with a preface by Verlaine

Verlaine represents him alongside him in his drawing Une soir chez Paul Verlaine (published in La Plume in February 1896) and devotes a sonnet to him which initially appeared in Le Chat noir in August 1889, then included in his collection Dédicaces in 1890.