Duranty [(Edmond)] - Lot 15

Duranty [(Edmond)] La Nouvelle Peinture. À propos du groupe d'artistes qui expose dans les galeries Durand-Ruel. Dentu, Paris, 1876. First edition (24.5 x 16.5 cm). Contemporary binding: Bradel full dark green silk percaline, beige silk percaline on spine. An emblematic copy of the first book ever devoted to the then reviled Impressionists, at the time of their second exhibition. Sent to Joris-Karl Huysmans, who discovered Degas and his comrades through this exhibition, and shortly afterwards created the still current concept of "modern art", thus bringing together the two main literary figures who supported nascent Impressionism from the outset. "To my colleague and friend J.K. Huysmans. Duranty" It was Champfleury who steered Edmond Duranty (1833-1880) towards literature, making him his disciple in realism, and introducing him to the bohemian group of artists, writers and poets who frequented the Andler brasserie in Courbet's entourage, including Baudelaire, Banville, Daumier and Vallès. Duranty wrote his book - the very first ever devoted to the Impressionist movement - probably with the idea of it appearing as an introduction to a catalog of the Second Impressionist Exhibition at Durand-Ruel, but this did not happen, so he took charge of printing the edition: "The first comprehensive work and above all the first manifesto not only of the right of painters to originality and realism, but of the theoretical Impressionism of the years 1875-1885 [....] It was from this brochure onwards that Impressionism defined itself as a style [...]" (Pierre Francastel, 1937). The association of this work with Huysmans is particularly significant, since he was soon to become one of the movement's leading critics. Later, Félix Fénéon went so far as to call him "the inventor of Impressionism". In his articles, Huysmans laid the foundations of "modern art", updating a concept that Théophile Gautier and then Charles Baudelaire had developed in their own way. But it was at this 1876 exhibition that the 28-year-old Huysmans, who was making his real debut as an art critic after a few isolated attempts since 1867, had his revelation of these new painters, in particular Degas and Caillebotte. This he described in his fine article of April 15 of the same year in the Gazette des amateurs de livres, d'estampes et de haute curiosité. This revelation was to leave an indelible mark not only on his future Salons, but also as a novelist, notably in 1884 for À Rebours. Provenance: J.K. Huysmans; Librairie Pierre Saunier, Paris, Bazar à Treize catalog, 2014, no. 77.