Lot n° 28
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2500 - 5000
EUR
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: 5 054EUR
Charcot (Jean-Martin) - Lot 28
Charcot (Jean-Martin)
Ɵ Original hachischine composition, with : Charcot (Jean-Martin) and Richer (Paul).
Les Démoniaques dans l'art. Delahaye & Lecrosnier, Paris, 1887. 67 figures (including numerous drawings by Paul Richer). First edition (29.5 x 22.5 cm). Protective grey cloth box.
Extremely rare original "diabolical" composition under the influence of hashish, in the era of the Hashishins' Club, in a set of twelve original drawings by Jean-Martin Charcot with the two books (both dedicated) devoted by Charcot and his pupil Paul Richer to the "demonic" and the "deformed" in art, with original photographs of Charcot and his family.
Original ink drawing (La Leçon, avec diables) done under the influence of hashish (Henry Meige, Charcot Artiste, Masson 1925, pages 37-38), dating from the Club des Hachischins founded in 1843-1844 by the alienist Joseph Moreau de Tours, in which many writers took part, from Nerval and Gautier to Balzac and Baudelaire. Baudelaire drew inspiration from this work for Les Paradis artificiels. Numerous painters, including Delacroix, Meissonier and Daumier, took part in the meetings, which were held at the Hôtel Pimodan (formerly the Hôtel de Lauzun) on the Île Saint-Louis. This was where "dawamesk", a greenish paste combining hashish, honey and herbs, was served.
This copy of the book is enriched by a double mailing (in Charcot's hand) from the authors on the title page: "À Monsieur Guillaume de S[nom illisible]tus hommage des auteurs Charcot Paul Richer".
This famous work is dedicated to the representation in art over the centuries of certain affections considered alternatively as organic or psychic, and which Jean-Martin Charcot and his school brought together in the great group of hysteria.
Professor for 33 years at La Salpêtrière, founder of the chair of psychiatry (for his pupil Benjamin Ball), then of neurology (for himself), Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) was also the teacher of Joseph Babinski and Sigmund Freud in the 1880s.
The set includes a series of additional original drawings by Jean-Martin Charcot (ink, graphite and colored pencil) combining portraits of colleagues, caricatures, anatomies, statues and objets d'art (circa 1890). With seventeen period photographs of Charcot and his family, in particular his daughter Jeanne, some of them previously unpublished. Charcot's drawings are unobtainable, as almost all had remained in the family or had been donated to the Charcot Museum at La Salpêtrière.
The perceptual distortions that Théophile Gautier evokes in his reminiscences are not unlike those of Charcot's Hachischin drawing: "I saw a crowd of bodiless heads like those of cherubs, who had such comical expressions, such jovial and profoundly happy faces, that I could not help sharing their hilarity. Their eyes crinkled, their mouths widened and their nostrils flared. They were grimaces to delight the spleen himself."
Enclosed:
Charcot (Jean-Martin), Richer (Paul). Les Difformes et les malades dans l'art. With figures interspersed in the text. Lecrosnier & Babé, Paris, 1889. 86 illustrations, including numerous drawings by Paul Richer. First edition.
Bound in contemporary half-calf, marbled paper boards and endpapers, spine ribbed with floral motifs and gilt title.
Letter in ink: "À Monsieur le Dr. Cruct hommage cordial Paul Richer".
Provenance: Jeanne Charcot. This is probably one of the only documents to have survived the fire in her house in which she died in 1940.
Exhibition: Charcot, une vie avec l'image, église Saint-Louis, La Salpêtrière, Paris, May 14-July 8, 2014.
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