Léon Bonnat: 2 signed autograph letters, Henriette Brown, Mulhouse Museum

  

2 autograph letters signed addressed to the photographer Gaston BRAUN. Gérardmer, [1906]; 4 pages, in-12 format. He suggests doing a charitable deed by buying a painting by Henriette Brown. The painter is asking for a favor.

In Mulhouse, there is a charitable institution run by the Sisters of Niederbronn (a congregation founded in 1849), which also has an orphanage in Niederbronn that supports sixty children (“it is truly touching and worthy of the greatest respect”). The orphanage needs to raise funds.

Léon Bonnat asks that his friend Braun use his connections to have it sold to the Musée de Mulhouse: “There is here a question of charity as well as a question of art.” In the second letter, Braun is waiting for a friend’s opinion. Bonnat insists on clarifying: “You understood well what I was telling you between the lines, didn’t you? One can like or dislike Mme Brown’s painting. I am not saying it is a masterpiece, but I do say that, given Mme Brown’s talent, the painting I am speaking of is a very good Brown, and as I wrote to you: ‘That is all I have to say to you’—moreover, it may be interesting for a museum to possess a work by someone who had a great reputation.” Changing the subject, he thanks him for the photographs, which will delight a few friends; “besides, I prove to them that I once had hair, sometimes.