Renée Mauperin

by Edmond de Goncourt; Jules de Goncourt

On March 15, 1885, the Journal Illustré published two portraits of the Goncourts drawn by Franc Lamy, and on November 20, 1886, the Cri du Peuple gave two others, in connection with the appearance of Renée Mauperin at the Odéon. We may also note that the medallion of the two brothers drawn and engraved by Bracquemond for the title-page of the first edition of L'Art du XVIIIème Siècle appeared in 1875. A delicate commemorative fancy caused the artist to surround the profile of Jules with a wreath of laurel.

PORTRAITS OF THE FRÈRES DE GONCOURT.
Part of a design by Willette, in Le Courrier Français, 1895.

Utterly crushed at first by the sense of loneliness and desolation his loss had created, Edmond de Goncourt was long entirely absorbed in memories of the departed. The spiritual presence of Jules filled the house with its mute and mournful sentiment. The heart-broken survivor could find consolation and relief for his pain only in friendship. Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Jules Vallès, the painter De Nittis, Burty, Flaubert, Renan, Taine, and Théodore de Banville sustained him with their affection. A band of ardent, active, and audacious young men, among whom M. Émile Zola was specially distinguished by the research of his formulæ, began to link him with Flaubert, offering them a common worship. Alphonse Daudet (we have now come to the year 1879) sketched the most faithful portrait of him to whom a whole generation was soon to give the respectful title of "the Marshal of Letters": "Edmond de Goncourt looks about fifty. His hair is gray, a light steel gray; his air is distinguished and genial; he has a tall, straight figure, and the sharp nose of the sporting dog, like a country gentleman keen for the chase, and, on his pale and energetic face, a smile of perpetual sadness, a glance that sometimes kindles, sharp as the graver's needle. What determination in that glance, what pain in that smile!" Many artists attempted to fix that glance and that smile with pencil or burin, but how few were successful!

EDMOND DE GONCOURT.
By Eugène Carrière.
Lithographed in 1895.

One of these few was the sculptor Alfred Lenoir, in a remarkable work executed quite at the end of Edmond de Goncourt's life. His white marble bust well expresses the patrician of letters, the collector, the worshipper of all kinds of beauty. A voluptuous thrill seems to stir the nostrils, a flash of sympathetic observation to gleam from the deep set eyes.

EDMOND DE GONCOURT.
By Eugène Carrière.
From the cover of a vellum-bound book.

The author of this bust, a work elaborated and modelled after the manner of those executed by Pajou, Caffieri, and Falconnet in the eighteenth century (see the reproduction at the beginning of this volume), may congratulate himself on having given to Edmond de Goncourt's friends the most exquisite semblance of their lost comrade. Carrière, on the other hand, in his superb lithograph, where only the eyes are vivid, and Will Rothenstein, in a sketch from nature which represents the master with a high cravat round his throat, his chin resting on a hand of incomparable form and distinction, have reproduced, with great intensity and comprehension, Edmond de Goncourt grown old, but still robust, upright and gallant, a soldier of art in whom the creative faculty is by no means exhausted. Rothenstein's lithograph in particular, with the sort of morbid languor that pervades it, the mournful fixity of the gaze, the aristocratic slenderness of the hands and the features, surprises and startles the spectator. "By nature and by education," says M. Paul Bourget, "M. Ed. de Goncourt possesses an intelligence, the overacuteness of which verges on disease in its comprehension of infinitesimal gradations and of the infinitely subtle creature." Mr. Rothenstein has made this intelligence flash from every line of his drawing.

Frédéric Régamey, Bracquemond (in the fine drawing at the Luxembourg), De Nittis (in pastel), Raffaelli (in an oil painting), Desboutins (in an etching), and finally M. Helleu (in dry point), have striven to penetrate and preserve the subtle psychology of the master's grave, proud, and gentle countenance. With these distinguished names the iconography of the Goncourts concludes. Perhaps, as a light and graceful monument of memory, we might add the fine drawing made by Willette on the occasion of the Edmond de Goncourt banquet, which represents the elder brother standing, leaning against the pedestal of his brother's statue, while at his feet three creatures, symbolizing the principal forms of their inspiration, are grouped, superb and mournful. Who are they? No doubt Madame de Pompadour, the Geisha of Japanese art, and finally, bestial and degraded, La Fille Élisa—types that symbolize the most salient aspects of that genius—historic, æsthetic, and fictional—which will keep green the precious memory of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.