Moli èr e
th e le a r n ed l a di e s
(Le s fe m m e s sava n te s)
A fa mous actor’ s copy :
the one of Jea n M au duit
c a lled L a r i v e
NEW YORK
A NTIQUARIA N BOOK FAIR
March, 9-12th 2017
Park Avenue Armory
Booth C9
Moli èr e
th e le a r n ed l a di e s
(Le s fe m m e s sava n te s)
A fa mous actor’ s copy :
the one of Jea n M au duit
c a lled L a r i v e
cahier n° 10
NEW YORK
A NTIQUARIA N BOOK FAIR
March, 9-12th 2017
Park Avenue Armory
Booth C9
21, rue Fresnel. 75116 Paris
Molière by Charles Antoine Coypel,
1730, Library of la Comédie Française.
M. + 33 (0) 6 80 15 34 45 - T. +33 (0)1 47 23 41 18 - F. + 33 (0)1 47 23 58 65
jean-baptiste @deproyart.com
[email protected]
Conditions de vente conformes aux usages du Syndicat de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne
et aux règlements de la Ligue Internationale de la Librairie Ancienne
N° de TVA.: FR 21 478 71 326
Les Femmes savantes was created at the Palais Royal on 11 March 1672 and
published in December of the same year. Two months later in February 1673,
Molière died after the 4th performance of the Malade imaginaire. Les Femmes
savantes is therefore the last play published during his lifetime. His work ends
where it started, with a play centered on women. Fifteen years separate Les
Précieuses ridicules and Les Femmes savantes.
For Donneau de Visé, a chronicler at the Mercure galant, and contemporary of
Molière, Les Femmes savantes is the direct heir of the Précieuses from 1659. The
comedy revolves around the same ridiculous ambitions of women in relation
to knowledge and love. It is no longer a matter of laughing at women but of
defending their cause while making the audience laugh:
“Molière goes much further in Les Femmes savantes than in his Précieuses ridicules.
For the first time he addresses the fundamental question of physical love other than
through traditional jokes … To this enlightened combat Molière has mixed in another
subject of debate: feminine knowledge. The three women who want to be only spirit
show it by refusing their bodies to love” (R. Duchêne).
The last complete theatrical season of Molière in 1671-1672, was not without
worry, mainly because of the privilege of the opera that the King granted upon
Lully. An ordinance furthermore prohibited actors from using more than two
singers and six violins. Opera singers were thus put above actors. Although
Molière was afraid of not being able to fill the theaters with spoken plays, he
nevertheless decided to go back to putting on comedies without the ornaments,
rather than playing comedy-ballets without music. Les Femmes savantes was thus
staged when Lulli got his privilege.
The play was a success. Molière performed it twenty six times the year before
his death (in comparison, Les Précieuses ridicules was performed seventy times in
thirteen years of performances). The profits accrued for the 1671-1672 season
amounted to 52,912 livres despite the considerable amounts (5,353 livres) that
had to be taken from the earnings to pay the double layout of the hall. Each
actor’s share was 4,233 livres.
4
Hence the troupe of the Palais-Royal became independent. Molière now owned
a theater that no longer needed royal commissions to ensure its maintenance
and that of his troupe, the biggest part of the profits coming directly from
Parisian audiences. On 17 September 1672, between two performances in
town, Molière had to perform Les Femmes savantes in front of the King. He
would thus give in Versailles “a most agreeable comedy entitled Les Femmes
savantes, and which was admired by everyone” reported La Gazette de France.
It was undoubtedly the last time that Molière would perform at Court, for the
King, in front of the King.
In the 18th century, his work continued to know an immense success and was
constantly performed. It is interesting to see how one era was able to read it, that
is to say, use it:
It is equally interesting to see how an era could play him. This is what this little
set of books tries to illustrate:
1.The first book is the first edition of Femmes savantes (1672). Of Molière’s
plays, we know the extreme scarcity of contemporary bound copies. This one
possesses an other charm, it is an actor’s copy which had belonged to one
of the greatest members of the Comédie Française at the dawn of the French
Revolution, Jean Mauduit known as Larive.
2.The second book that of Antoine-Vincent Arnault, is a charming collection
making up the history of great French actors of the 18th century, through
text and engravings. Jean Mauduit known as Larive features there in good
position.
3.The third book presented is not a book but a suite of engravings whose
drawings were sketched from life in 1726 by Charles Antoine Coypel, when he
was watching performances of Molière’s plays in the hall of the same Théâtre
Français. Coypel is known to have been one of the best artists of the Regency.
It’s a unique testimony of how Molière was played.
5
[1] MOLIÈRE
Les Femmes savantes
Paris, Pierre Promé, 1673 [December 10, 1672]
MOLIÈRE IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
EXCEPTIONAL ACTOR’S COPY, THAT OF JEAN MAUDUIT, KNOWN
AS LARIVE, ONE OF THE GREATEST ACTORS OF THE 18th
CENTURY, STUDENT OF LEK AIN AND FRIEND OF VOLTAIRE.
COPY CITED BY TCHEMERZINE.
“THERE WAS TALK ONLY OF LARIVE; EVERY YOUNG ACTOR TRIED
TO IMITATE LARIVE. HE WAS THE FAVORITE ACTOR OF WOMEN
AND YOUNG PEOPLE” (Grimod de La Reynière).
MOLIÈRE’S COPIES WITH A PRE-REVOLUTIONARY THEATRICAL
PROVENANCE DON’T EXIST.
LES FEMMES SAVANTES WAS PERFORMED EIGHTY-FIVE TIMES AT
THE COMÉDIE FR ANÇAISE, WHEN LARIVE WAS A MEMBER
FIRST EDITION.
Second state “in all points similar to that of 1672” (Guibert).
“Baron de Ruble owned a unique copy dated 1672” (Tchemerzine).
12mo (150 x 88mm)
Fleurons, headpiece and engraved initials
COLLATION: π2 A8 B 4 C8 D4 E 8 F4 G8 H 2 : 48 leaves
18TH CENTURY BINDING. Marbled calf, gilt supra-libris stamped on the upper side, gilt dos
à nerfs, red edges. Box
PROVENANCE: Jean Mauduit known as “Larive”, “La Rive” or “de La Rive” (supra-libris and
ex-libris)
Small marginal tear on the last leaf. Cap and corners lightly rubbed
6
7
Jean Mauduit, known as Larive (1747-1827) was one of the most brilliant French
actors of the Enlightenment. He began his career as a double to the famous
tragedian Henri Louis Le Kain (1729-1778). At the time of his death, he had
held leading roles at the Comédie Française for over ten years, with an everincreasing success. When Jean Mauduit was a teenager with an untamable
temperament, his grocer father from La Rochelle, sent him to Santo-Domingo.
He escaped from the island, reached Paris and went knocking audaciously on Le
Kain’s door. Alexandre Grimod de La Reynière, a gourmet and contemporary
critic of Larive, relates these words exchanged between the apprentice-actor and
the great tragedian:
“I dared, on my return from Santo Domingo go find the famous Le Kain. Filled with
everything that his talent had inspired me, I told him that I was American (not wanting
to be recognized, in the case where he would not favorably judge my abilities), I dared
to add that a noble emulation carried me; that I had conceived being his double at
the Comédie Française; that I expected from him a sincere avowal of my physical and
moral abilities: what I thought I could assure him of, was that if he found in me no
marked fault, I would succeed in being his double or would die trying. Le Kain smiled
maliciously, and the intention of his smile was engraved in my memory; it is perhaps
this memory that has most strengthened my emulation”.
Le Kain advised him to get some practice in the provinces. Jean Mauduit took
the pseudonym of Larive (in memory of the locality of his paternal home “La
petite rive”). In Lyon, Mademoiselle Clairon – twenty years his elder – who was
performing there, undertook to make him a great tragedian. On December 3,
1770, the Sieur of Larive began at the Comédie Française with the role of Zamore
in Voltaire’s Alzire. This beginning was not a happy one. The performance that
had started with applause ended in whistles. Larive left for Brussels and remained
there for four years despite Mademoiselle Clairon’s entreaties.
He did not return to Paris until 1775 where he attempted a second debut,
performing in Iphigénie en Tauride. The reception he got from the public was so
favorable to him that the members of the Comédie looked upon him for Le Kain’s
double. Never did the surprise equal that of the Master when he found in Larive
the supposed American to whom he had formerly granted an audition:
8
9
“enchanted with my happy start, added Larive, I invited him one day to dinner;
at the end of the meal, I made conv ersation on the temerity of beginners and
on their confidence; I asked him if he remembered a young American who
had consulted him and who had confessed to him his pretention of becoming
his double; after having thought for a moment, Le Kain said to me: Ah! I
remember, I had never seen anything crazier than that young man; he had in
his head all the hotness of his country; he had to, he said, either die or be my
double; and, since he isn’t, I don’t doubt that he is dead. Forgive me, I replied
clinking glasses with him, he kept his word to you; as that crazy American is
myself ” (words recounted by Grimod de La Reynière).
The archives of the Comédie Française preserve the manuscript inventory of
Larive’s roles as a double, entitled Rôles auxquels M. Delarive doit se tenir prêt, qui
sont de l’emploi de M. Le Kain et qu’il a tous joués (Roles to which Mr Delarive
must be ready, which are the employment of Mr. Le Kain and all of which he
has played). The repertoire contains close to ninety roles to know simultaneously
by heart! The tragedy category makes up most of it, especially Corneille’s plays
(Pierre and Thomas), Racine and Voltaire. The principal comic plays are by
Molière: Le Tartuffe, Les Fourberies de Scapin, Le Médecin malgré lui, Les Précieuses
ridicules. A second manuscript inventory, that of Le Kain, indicates the roles
that he held “in the lead”, and those that he had Larive hold “as a double”. The
older Le Kain got and saw his health decline, the more he was forced to give up
leading roles. A letter dated November 15, 1776, establishes a passing of the
torch between the two actors: “I feel my friend, that it is soon time to retire and
to leave you the kingdom to govern; may you put a little more order into your
little states than it was ever possible for me to do”. These inventories are very
incomplete and not dated but Le Kain had himself systematically “doubled” for
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Le Malade imaginaire. Finally, the important
Inventaire des Registres, also preserved at the archives of the Comédie Française,
show that Les Femmes savantes was performed eighty-five times at the Comédie
Française, between 1771 and 1789, that is, several times a year while Larive was
a member there. The cast is not mentioned, but, according to the site of the
Comédie Française, Larive held the role of the young lover Clitandre.
After Le Kain died in 1778, Larive was given possession of the roles of the great
artist and occupied the first rank of the tragic stage until the Revolution. On
April 24, 1778, he played the part of Alceste in Le Misanthrope. Larive enjoyed
the glory of being the principal actor of the Comédie Française for ten years:
“his reputation became immense. There was talk only of Larive; every young
actor endeavored to imitate Larive: even his greatest flaws, in the eyes of the
10
masses became admirable beauties. Larive saw big, seized the whole role well,
was always noble and energetic; his developments were easy and of good effect;
his gestures always varied, natural and expressive. Never perhaps had one seen
such a handsome man on stage; a perfectly drawn head, beautiful teeth, bulging
eyes, a big voice, full, round and sonorous, whose modulations were infinite,
and which, admirable in the medium, became terrible in the outbursts; all the
physical advantages, in one word, were the prerogative of this actor. Enriched
with his natural gift, and endowed with this happy irritability of nerves that
produce all kinds of enthusiasm, he was the actor par excellence in essentially
heroic roles, in those of a chivalrous genre especially. Another peculiar reality
characterized him; no one acted with such naturalness and energy, insulting
contempt, bitter irony and all that can be called tragic bravado; the harshness
of the tone that he placed there, and the intimate feeling that he seemed to
have of his strength and authority, almost invariably crushed his interlocutors.
Whatever several journalists, who had undoubtedly not seen him at the time
of his great success, may have said, this actor will leave a fine name in the
history of theater. We will always cite four great tragedians: Baron for noblesse,
naturalness and decency; Le Kain for depth, energy and the sublimity of the
pathos; Larive for brilliance, enthusiasm, heroism and training; and Talma, in
a less extended circle, for the energy of concentrated feelings, the terrible game
of physiognomy and the perfection of pantomime” (Grimod de la Reynière).
Larive left the Comédie Française in 1789. In 1793, he was incarcerated and just
escaped the guillotine, having been accused of giving shelter to Lafayette. On
his release he left on a tour in the provinces, which was to be a new triumph. It
was said that Le Kain, when crossing the Styx, had left his genius on “Larive”. In
1800, he attempted a return in Paris but the glory of Talma was at its peak, and
Larive’s art now belonged to another era. He thenceforth enjoyed a retirement full
of honors and devoted himself to the construction of his property at Montlignon.
From Stendhal to Louis Jouvet.
In 1804, the newspapers spoke again of Larive and gave luster to this glory of
the Ancien Régime. The former member of the Comédie Française had published
Réflexions sur l’art théâtral (1801) as well as Cours de déclamation divided into
twelve sessions (1804). The Journal des Débats and the Courrier des spectacles
announced that at the Hotel Choiseul on n° 3 rue Neuve-Grange-Batelière,
the tragedian had started giving classes in declamation. On August 21, 1804,
Larive gave the first of twelve lessons promised to Stendhal and Pierre Daru.
Calculating what it cost them (one louis of 24 francs for a half hour), they must
surely have hoped it to be of great value. But as Larive couldn’t bear the jokes of
the two cousins, the lessons ceased after three months.
11
One hundred fifty years after Stendhal, Louis Jouvet referred to Larive in his
classes at the Conservatory, notably for the work of the actors’ entering the stage:
if the actor knew how to “attack” a stage, he would know how to play it, all his
work naturally arising from this first moment. To succeed at this entrance, Jouvet
put into place a breathing technique inspired by Larive’s Cours de déclamation:
the actor must use his voice as a medium by working in a semi-tone according
to the inflections of the role, then leave room for the natural, once possession of
the role is taken on stage: “I’m thinking of Larive’s treatise and his comments on
Phèdre: “at this moment, tears should come naturally to the actor”.
The characteristics of this copy indicate that Larive took ownership of it either
at the time of his glory or at his golden retirement, rather than during his first
missteps. It is a first edition that was already quite rare one hundred years after
its publication. The binding in 18th century marbled calf and the engraved and
pasted down ex-libris indicate the likely existence of a library of selected works
that we know nothing of today. Larive would probably not have created an exlibris for just a few volumes, and a young penniless actor at the start of his career
would probably not have owned such a first edition. This unique provenance is
all the more extraordinary, as it is one of Molière’s great comedies, the last to be
published before his death. It is witness not only to Larive himself, but also to the
bond between the tutelary figure of the Comédie Française and one of its most
eminent interpreters under the Ancien Régime. The custodian-archivists of the
Comédie Française confirm the uniqueness of such a copy of a pre-revolutionary
actor.
REFERENCES : Guibert, I, p. 347 (”sur le plan purement littéraire cette pièce est une des plus
parfaite”) -- Tchemerzine IV, p. 799 -- Le Petit, p. 309 -- site de la Comédie Française : http://
www.comedie-francaise.fr/histoire-et-patrimoine.php?id=386 -- Registres de pièces représentées à
la Comédie française, de la saison 1770-1771 à la saison 1788-1789, bibliothèque de la Comédie
Française -- Alexandre Grimod de La Reynière, Revue des Comédiens, ou critique raisonnée de tous
les acteurs, danseurs et mîmes de la capitale, Paris, 1808 -- Martine de Rougemont, La Vie théâtrale
en France au XVIIIe s., Paris, 1988 -- Maurice Lever, Théâtre et Lumières : les spectacles de Paris
au XVIIIe s., Paris, 2001 -- Jean-Jacques Olivier, Henri-Louis Le Kain, de la Comédie-Française,
Paris, 1907 -- Mémoires de Henri Louis Lekain, Colnet, Debray et Mongie, Paris, 1801 -- Paul
Arbeiet, Le Tragédien Larive et son élève Stendhal, 28 juillet 1928
49.000 € / $53,000
12
13
14
cf. [2]
15
[2] ARNAULT,
Antoine-Vincent
Les Souvenirs et les regrets du vieil amateur dramatique,
ou lettres d’un oncle à son neveu sur l’ancien théâtre français
Paris, Charles Froment, 1829
PORTR AITS OF GREAT ACTORS OF THE COMÉDIE FR ANÇAISE IN
THE ENLIGHTENMENT, INCLUDING JEAN MAUDUIT-LARIVE.
FINE COPY IN CONTEMPOR ARY BINDING
16
17
FIRST EDITION
8vo (172 x 106mm)
ILLUSTRATION: 36 engraved plates enhanced with original colors. Some are shorter than the
others
CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Straight grain green morocco, gilt and stamped decor on
sides, flat spine gilt, gilt edges
Les Souvenirs et les regrets du vieil amateur dramatique assembles the portraits
of the most brilliant members of the Comédie française of the second half of the
18th century. The frontispiece depicts Voltaire playing opposite Le Kain in the
creation of Fanatisme ou Mahomet le prophète. Voltaire wrote the leading role of
his play for his actor friend, and even presented him with the manuscript. Both
of them are placed at the head of this book and appear as tutelary figures of the
dramatic arts.
In their wake are Mademoiselle Clairon (depicted twice at two different ages),
Larive at his beginnings taking a tragic pose and the actors Molé, Bellecour,
Préville, Brizard, Fleury etc.
Completing the portraits are short biographical and critical texts. The
academician and “drama amateur” Antoine-Vincent Arnault, as mentioned in
the title, saw all these actors on stage.
The six pages devoted to Larive (pp. 87 and foll.) sway between the annoyance
that his complacency as a young leading man could engender and the admiration
for certain roles that he would endorse at maturity. The only comedy cited by
Arnault is precisely by Molière:
“the one where Larive shone the most in my opinion, is the role of the fencing
master, in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. As all his physical advantages were
developing, he only needed to show himself there to be applauded, he liked to
perform this role in which Kain, without a doubt, would have been less well
placed. Le Kain did not have his leg as well built as Mr. Larive”
1.800 € / $2,000
18
19
cf. [3]
Paris, chez Surrugue, 1726
to the stage. He doesn’t illustrate Molière’s text; he sketches its movements from
life. A deeper study would make it almost possible to identify the spectators and
the actors themselves. This suite by Coypel offers a splendid testimony of what
the Comédie Française was at the dawn of the Enlightenment, one evening when
a comedy of Molière’s was being performed.
MOLIÈRE SKETCHES FROM LIFE BY CHARLES ANTOINE COYPEL,
ONE OF THE BEST ARTISTS OF THE REGENCY.
This suite was featured in July 1726 in the Mercure de France. One could almost
believe that the writers of the article were giving an account of a performance
they had attended:
[3] COYPEL,
Charles Antoine.
Suitte d’Estampes des principaux sujets des Comédies de
Molière Gravées sur les Esquisses de Charles Coypel
REMARK ABLE VISUAL TESTIMONY OF MOLIÈRE’S PLAYS
PERFORMED AT THE COMÉDIE FR ANÇAISE, AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE 18 TH CENTURY
FIRST EDITION
Folio (325 x 262mm)
ILLUSTRATION: 6 engravings etched by chisel by François Joullain, after drawings by Charles
Coypel
CONTENTS OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS (rating no of the catalogue raisonné by Th.
Lefrançois): title-frontispiece (D. 29); Psyché (P. 75); Georges Dandin (D. 30); Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac (D. 31); Les Femmes savantes (D. 32); L’École des femmes (D. 33)
20TH CENTURY BINDING. Bradel with vellum spine, plates mounted on guards
PROVENANCE: Lucien Tissot-Dupont (ex-libris)
Molière’s comedies gave rise to various renderings by great artists. One of the
most famous versions is by François Boucher (1734). However, its static aspect
makes one forget the theater itself. Boucher illustrates texts and not their
performance so it falls within a common enough project of an illustrated book.
The much scarcer suite of engravings by Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752)
is exactly the opposite of Boucher’s engravings. This is the difference between
the theater that we read and the theater that we see. The engravings restore the
Molière of the Regency in all the inventive vigor of his performances. Coypel
stands among the spectators of the Comédie Française in 1726. While Boucher
invented almost timeless, abstract scenes, Coypel was close to his subject, glued
22
“The idea [of this frontispiece] appeared very ingenious. It depicts the room of the
Comédie, the curtain and the chandeliers lowered. We see a part of the box seats and
the parterre that the author has filled with varied and comical characters: dandies of
the theater, dandizettes of the bel air in the box seats; in the parterre, old pillars of the
theater, recently arrived young people, difficult great men, etc.”
According to the editors of the Mercure, Coypel rendered the spectators’
animation during the few minutes preceding a performance in the former room
of the Comédie Française on rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain. Behind the half
opened curtain is an actor or a pledgee of the theater, on each side of the stage,
audiences sitting behind a balustrade, on the bench seats bordering the stage (an
English custom introduced to France after 1650). These bench seats had been
installed at the time of the theater’s construction in 1689, then extended in 1698,
to better counter the confusion between the audience “on the theater” and the
actors. The audience in the parterre is upright, separated from the stage by a grill,
the chandeliers still lowered to bring a maximum of light to the room before the
beginning of the performance and are raised at the same time as the curtain. You
would believe yourself at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in the opening scene of Cyrano
de Bergerac or in some scene from Proust where everything happens in the room
and not on the stage. The three knocks will resound:
“This engraving, preceding the suite of prints – like the vision that it evokes, in reality
preceded each performance of the Comédie Française, thus making it a document of
exceptional interest. Not only does it give us an idea of the former room of the famous
Company (the current Comédie Française was built by Victor Louis from 1786 to
1790), but also and above all, in a singularly lively shortcut, it allows us to grasp the
relationship between the theater and society in 1726” (Th. Lefrançois)
23
The drawings before the engraving.
Charles Coypel wrote his project on the curtain of the frontispiece: “you cherish
no less the works of Molière than those of Michel Cervantes. Therefore I still
hope that you will forgive the drawings and favor the subjects”.
In other words, Coypel compared these drawings of theatrical scenes to the great
project of his life, the famous tapestries of Don Quixote for which he had painted
twenty eight paintings over more than thirty years, between 1716 and 1751.
These tapestries were being woven when Coypel undertook to draw these scenes
of Molière’s comedies. The public already knew a suite of engravings of Don
Quixote. But with this new suite, Coypel obviously did not have the ambition of
rivaling with the sumptuous tapestries commissioned by the grandson of Louis
XIV, the Duc d’Orléans. At the time, Charles Antoine Coypel was the first
painter of the Duc d’Orléans before becoming that of the King twenty years later.
The engravings were not a princely commission. Were they even commissioned?
They simply establish a pause in his work, almost a relaxation. For the painter,
their charm lies in the modest pleasure of depicting a theater that he knows and
of sharing it with his audience. We perceive this “pleasure” of the artist even in
the laughing aspect of the images.
This suite is in itself a completed project, conceived as such from the drawing to
the engraving. These engravings don’t arise from another set (contrary to those
of Don Quixote done after the paintings and tapestries) and do not form a series
destined for the illustration of a book.
In July 1726 the Mercure de France published the following announcement:
“M. Coypel, first painter of Monseigneur the Duc d’Orléans and author of the paintings
of Don Quixote, has just given the public four engraved etchings after his drawings and
whose subjects are the titles of the comedies of Molière. He depicts the main scene in
each play or, rather, one of those that seem most suitable to expression… The subjects
treated were Georges Dandin, asking his wife for forgiveness in the presence of Mr.
and Mrs. de Sottenville, Pourceaugnac between the two doctors, Trissottin reading
his sonnet to the femmes savantes. These three prints were preceded by a fourth which
would serve as the frontispiece for every book”.
The suite was completed soon after with a scene from the École des femmes,
then by a scene from Psyché (bound in first position in our copy). Contrary to
26
the opinion formulated by Antoine Schnapper for whom the suite was engraved
from “painted sketches”, drawings served as models to the engraver for five of
the etchings. The dedication epistle by Coypel on the frontispiece speaks only
of ”sketches” and the frontispiece of “drawings”. Each of the first four theatrical
illustrations bears the mention “engraved by Joullain on the drawing of Ch.
Coypel”. We have found no mention of paintings having served as possible
models. An examination of Joullain’s engravings is in its self very revealing.
His first five plates show etching work barely continued by chisel, which reveals
through its lightness and spiritual lines, drawn models.
Les Femmes savantes, a drawing by Vivant Denon.
Only one preparatory drawing is still known, that of the Femmes savantes. It was
part of the Vivant Denon collection (cf. Denon and Duval, 1829, p. 293) before
becoming part of the Marquis Charles de Valori’s collection (Paris, 25 November
1907, n° 38, reproduced). It reappeared in a sale (Paris, 9 June 1953, n° 4) before
being lost sight of again. The perfect conformity of the drawing from the former
Vivant Denon collection with Joullain’s engraving (in relation to which it is
naturally reversed) leaves no doubt to the fact that this one served as a model to
the engraver.
Coypel chose to draw the famous Scene 2 of Act III of the Femmes savantes. The
composition is rigorous, frontal and symmetrical. Trissotin, pompously sitting
in a large armchair is seriously reading poems with ridiculous titles to the three
women framing him: Sonnet à la Princesse Uranie, sur sa fièvre or the epigram Sur
un carrosse de couleur amarante donné à une dame de ses amies.
Coypel was perfectly able to bring out the comedy of this play as the members of
the Comédie Française performed it in 1726. The austere prudery of the women
wishing to be scholarly is manifested in their dress, pushed to the point of ugliness.
Their collars are closed high, their hair neglected. Their hands suspended in
the air cannot support the real pleasure that reading brings them. By contrast,
a fourth woman, young, breathing freely, stands daydreaming away from the
stage, while the statue of Sappho with her insolently swelled up chest over the
three learned women whose foreheads are coquettishly decorated with warts.
Sensuality cannot completely be restrained in this rigorously ordered parlor.
The philosophical and literary concerns of the audience are also judiciously
perceptible in the busts of Aristotle and Sappho, placed on either side of the door.
27
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The case of Psyché.
Only one engraving, the scene from Psyché (bound in the front of our copy),
with the darkest blacks, corresponds to the traditional work of a chisel rendering
a painting. The engraving would have been made from a painting by Coypel and
not from a drawing. This painting called Psyché abandonné par l’amour is preserved
at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille. It can be surprising to see this composition
included in the Suite d’estampes des principaux sujets de comédies de Molière for
not only is this play not a comedy (it is a tragedy-ballet) but it is the result of
the collaboration between Molière, Corneille, Quinault and Lully. The last two
acts were entirely written by Corneille, on a plan by Molière. Coypel was a great
admirer and connoisseur of Molière and these considerations were certainly not
foreign to him. Why would he have chosen a minor play in Molière’s repertory
that was shared with others and which did not respond to the project of the title,
to assemble “comedies”? This composition is not mentioned in the announcement
of the Mercure de France of July 1726. According to Thierry Lefrançois, “we have
every reason to believe that the painting of Psyché had had some success, Charles
Coypel or Louis Surugue, the publisher of the suite, thought afterwards that they
would usefully complete the suite of Molière’s comedies, even if by its subject and
style, the comparison did not seem to be necessary”.
This suite of six engravings appeared in the sales catalogue after Charles Coypel’s
death in 1753 (n° 479), written up by Pierre-Jean Mariette. Its scarcity had kept
it unknown for too long. These engravings are nevertheless remarkable for more
than one reason. Charles Antoine Coypel did not illustrate one text, nor make
one book. No verse of Molière’s accompanies this suite. In six engraved images,
by a “singularly lively shortcut”, Coypel shows with one stroke Molière’s theater
being acted at the Comédie Française at the beginning of the 18th century. How
do you play Molière barely a half-century after his death? What other direct
visual testimony do we have of the depiction of some of the most important plays
of the French repertory, performed on one of the most important stages of the
18th century? Vivant Denon didn’t do too wrongly, preserving the only known
drawing of this extraordinary suite.
REFERENCES: Thierry Lefrançois, Charles Coypel. Peintre du roi, Paris, 1994, pp.
425 and foll. -- Cohen-de Ricci, Guide de l’amateur de livres à gravures du XVIIIe
siècle, 711: “these figures, where the exact tradition of types, costumes and staging
have been preserved are rare” -- P. Lacroix, Iconographie molièresque, Nice, 1872, p.
31 -- Voltaire, Vie de Molière avec de petits sommaires de ses pièces, Paris, 1739
Charles Antoine Coypel, self-portrait, 1734. Getty Museum.
12.000 € / $12,700
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