Félicien Rops Belgian, 1833-1898

Ottokar Mascha, Felicien Rops und sein Werk, Munich, 1910, no. 711, pp. 284-285 (a black and white print illustrated)
Maurice Exteens, L'oeuvre gravé et lithographié de Félicien Rops, Paris, 1928, no. 853
Robert Delevoy, Gilbert Lascault, Jean-Pierre Verheggen, Guy Cuvelier, Félicien Rops, Brussels, 1985, pp. 152-155 (the original watercolour and a series of 16 prints of the subject illustrated)

On wove paper, 18 of the works with full margins, in overall good condition apart from pale paper discoloration to the extreme edges of the sheets, some minor tears and creases, other minor defects (unexamined out of frames).
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Based on Rops' watercolour of 1878, the present lot comprises twenty items: (i) the complete series of eighteen trial proofs from an edition of nine used to create the colour etchings of Pornokrates. All eighteen proofs were etched in Paris in 1896 by Albert Bertrand and edited and sold by Gustave Pellet, who also published Toulouse-Lautrec's prints; (ii) the finished colour etching signed by Gustave Pellet from an edition of circa 115; (iii) the original etched cover for the series.

This series is the only known complete set from the original edition of nine still in private hands. Another set and the original watercolour of 1878 are in the collection of the Musée Félicien Rops, Namur. The other sets are thought to have been lost or dispersed.

Pornokrates or La Dame au Cochon is arguably Rops' most famous image. In a letter to his friend Henri Liesse, Rops described the creation of the Pornokrates  watercolour:  'I had the opportunity to see and kiss the black silk stockings with red flowers of a young girl whose lover is in Monaco. I placed her nude like a goddess, I had her wear long black gloves on these long beautiful hands that I clasped for three years, and on top, I coiffed her hair like those in Gainsboroughs, in black velour ornamented with gold, which gives the girls of our era the insolent dignity of women of the seventeenth century. The drawing pleases me. I want to show you this beautiful nude girl, shod, gloved and coiffed in black, silk, skin and velvet, her eyes blindfolded, walking on a pink marble frieze, led by a pig with a golden tail in front of a blue sky. Three loves (cupids) - the ancient loves - disappear crying...I made this in four days in a blue satin salon, in an overheated apartment, filled with odours, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a small fever beneficial to the production and to the reproduction. And so, my Pornokrates is finished. I have no idea to whom I could sell this work, but I don't care!' (Letter to Henri Liesse, 8 January 1879).

The production of colour prints based on original art works was very popular as it gave artists the opportunity to circulate their images widely. The technique that Rops pursued, however, of superimposing a series of coloured and black and white aquatints over each other to create a colour etching was then highly innovative and extremely rare.

Rops had moved to Paris at the behest of Baudelaire, who had recommended the artist to his publisher Poulet-Malassis in a poem:

Usez toutes vos éloquences
Mon bien cher coco Malperché

Comme je le ferais moi-même
A dire là-bas combien j'aime
Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops,

Qui n'est pas un grand prix de Rome
mais dont le talent est haut, comme
Les pyramides de Chéops

There, Rops soon achieved considerable notoriety owing both to his libertine lifestyle and the eroticism and decadence of his imagery (lots 288-291). He became a highly successful illustrator, providing visual accompaniments to works by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Barbey d'Aurevilly and Péladan, who wrote to him admiringly:  'I have seen some of your masterful etchings, which were of such an intense perversity that I, who am preparing the Treaty of the Perverse, have fallen head over heels for your extraordinary talent...' (Undated letter of Péladan to Rops quoted in Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Rêves Symbolistes, Paris, 1975, n.p.).