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Centaure en haut d'une Montagne
Centaur atop a Mountain
Salmon, n.d. Johnson n.d.
lithograph,
date unknown (but not earlier than 1910), a very fine and unique
working proof on medium-heavy weight beige wove paper, with wide margins,
extensively heightened with lithographic crayon, annotated on the verso, "Dessin repris sur épreuve" ["Drawing reworked over impression"] by the artist and signed with his initials "K X R" in pencil, followed by another annotation : "reporter sur pierre" ["to be transposed onto stone"], slight soiling on the verso (as may be expected on a working proof), but otherwise in quite excellent condition, never having been framed or mounted
P.202x147mm., S. 362x258mm.
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Provenance: originally from
the Ambroise Vollard archives, and the Henri-Marie Petiet estate, with
the HMP wetstamp (Lugt 5031) on the verso
This print was apparently conceived as part of a Vollard commission to illustrate Maurice de Guérin's two popular prose poems, Le Centaure & la Bacchante,
in 1910. (See
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k311542s?rk=21459;2)
Maurice de Guérin was a Romantic poet who died
prematurely in 1839; his work was brought to light by George Sand, and
published regularly throughout the 19th century.
The present impression appears to be an
illustration for the end of the first work, an elegy to his Elder,
"noble" Chiron, the wise centaur of the narrator's youth, reminiscing
past glory and reflecting on his own decline into old age, "still
I guard enough daring to reach to the height of the rocks, where I
linger..." :
Pour
moi, ô Mélampe ! je décline dans la vieillesse, calme comme le coucher
des constellations. Je garde encore assez de hardiesse pour gagner le
haut des rochers où je m'attarde, soit à considérer les nuages sauvages
et inquiets, soit à voir venir de l'horizon les hyades pluvieuses, les
pléiades ou le grand Orion ; mais je reconnais que je me réduis et me
perds rapidement comme une neige flottant sur les eaux, et que
prochainement j'irai me mêler aux fleuves qui coulent dans le vaste
sein de la terre.
(Cf. the English translation at https://user.eng.umd.edu/~newcomb/creative_works/TR1_Le_Centaure_translation.pdf)
It
was however only in the 1930s that Roussel delivered his projects, and
the collaboration was never finalized.
For a full discussion of this project, and other examples of the lithographs produced for Vollard's Centaure project, see https://www.inha.fr/actualites/lithographies-de-ker-xavier-roussel-1867-1944/
