Félicien ROPS / Signed Autograph Letter / Art / Cruelty / Canada / Shooting

  
Signed autograph letter "Félicien Rops" to a gentleman Paris, May 28, 1891? In-8° Tiny stains on the first page, period central fold. Rops declines an invitation to a musical performance in a rich and quirky letter, revealing some aspects of his past and delivering a ruthless judgment on the art of his contemporaries. I am both very delighted by the great kindness you have shown in sending me a ticket for the hearing of your Proses en Musique; and also sorry! Delighted, because having had my daughter play the piano for me, as I no longer play myself, your "album," lent to me by [Auguste] Delâtre, I genuinely appreciate your talent, with a very modern allure: music of a special nervousness, thoroughly Parisian, skeptical, & dreamy in the right places.

Note that in 1869 I was a "Bayreuthian" [allusion to Wagner's opera house in Bayreuth] before it was fashionable, just to tell you that I am only a Philistine in appearance.

I am also sorry, because I am forced by prior commitments to entertain, feed & amuse Canadians from the Great Lakes, who, in the past, in Manitoba, (already bored and soiled before me, by Chateaubriand, who would have been better off polluting Mme Récamier beforehand), offered me hospitality at their camp, at a time when Buffalo-Bill had not yet invented the traveling Far-West. - I would have liked to be at this hearing for my particular joy, & also to enjoy the happiness of the clever ears that will be there; because what you have written cannot be "mediocre," perhaps bad, or very beautiful, depending on each person's soul, the dispositions of the courts, or the gastric situations of the listeners.

You are "fortunate" because in what I have read of you, the eternal & unchanging stupidity of artists is avoided, right from the start, by a special & rare gift.

Because all: sculptors, poets, musicians, painters, except for about twenty "cerebrally seeing" are a band of Simian & Lemur-like creatures who should be gently taken in May, under the pretext of a spring omelette, to a pretty wood full of lilies of the valley & blue hyacinths, and shot, with regret & the melancholic tenderness that accompanies the killing of old mangy dogs.

We would comfort agriculture lacking in labor, and grocery stores lacking in [Henri] Pottin, with this legitimate & salutary execution. Because Pottin could have been Bougereau or [Edmond] Audran. I'm not talking about the father, who sang delightfully in bad comic operas, with the voice of Mr Buffet, but about the son.

Because the cows are poorly guarded only because the cowherds are doing great art, and everyone is no longer doing their job. How many "artists" & the most institutionalized, would have done well at the end of a plow to break up the deep lands! - And this is what makes the most beautiful quality disappear: Sincerity in Art.

Because nothing replaces this sincerity! Note that I do not speak the truth, which is always a relative & fluctuating thing depending on temperaments.

So I am "happy to have made your acquaintance" & unhappy not to know you better on Thursday.

I, with a commendable intention, disposed of the ticket you had made available to me. I gave it to an editor of any kind of "musical review" who promised me to write an article about the hearing. I do not know his musical tendencies, but personally he is not a fool; true that proves nothing, but I did my best! I shake your hand & wish you great success on Thursday night.

This letter can be dated with almost certainty after 1887, given its references to North America. Rops had made a trip to the United States that year with the Duluc sisters who had explored the American market for their fashion house.

The artist visits New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec etc. And here takes the opportunity to deliver a harsh judgment towards Chateaubriand who, nearly a century earlier, had traveled to the same regions that inspired his first novels, romantic masterpieces.

We know of the friendships that united Rops and Auguste Delâtre (mentioned at the beginning of the letter), a French illustrator and printer. The latter published, in 1887, a technical treatise entitled Etching, Dry Point and Soft Varnish, to which Rops actively contributed.