Description
RARE APOCRYPHAL BOOKPLATE BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ENGRAVED ON COPPER BY FÉLIX VALLOTTONA portrait-mask of Baudelaire, a skull, a snake and a spray of wilted flowers.
Copy on laid paper from the collection of 35 plates. Imaginary and supposed bookplates of famous people, ancient and modernes, given by the publisher Joly in 1895.
Vallotton confirms the attribution in a correspondence with Fernand Vandérem (Félix Vallotton, Letters and documents II, 1900-1914. Letters 263-265) :
"I have just bought a small bookplate, etching on chine, before the letter, described as follows:
At the bottom, in a half halo: Ex-libris of Charles Baudelaire.
Framing these words, in the foreground, a mask of Baudelaire between a skull and two snakes.
You're probably going to tell me that you don't care. But hold on.
On the back, I read in pencil: Vallotton. What does it mean?
Is this a false attribution?
Did an amateur commission this posthumous bookplate?
Or are you a contemporary of the author of Les Fleurs du Mal?
I would be very grateful if you could clear up this mystery for me. [...]"
Vallotton replies:
"I did in fact, during 1893, make the small ex-libris of which you speak. I had been asked to do it, as well as one or two others whose subject I have lost, by the publisher Joly Quai St Michel. [...] I can give you this information with complete certainty, a book that I have from everything I do does not allow the slightest doubt. Don't be proud of this acquisition, it's a rather mediocre thing; my conscience reproaches me quite a lot for it, it goes back to the days of great hardship".
To his correspondent, whose curiosity is not entirely satisfied ("What do you think was the intention of the publisher who commissioned this curious ex-libiris? Did he really want to pass it off as Baudelaire's ex-libris?"), Vallotton adds: "Publisher Joly's idea was to produce a series of ex-libris for all the great names in literature, and he had to commission several artists to do so.". However, his imaginary bookplate will reappear in the catalogue. Stendhal, Baudelaire, Balzac, Hugo.... of a major bookseller, affixed to a first edition of the Flowers of Evil. "Baudelaire's as yet unknown bookplate"The price was set accordingly. The copy did not find a buyer, and was eventually sold at auction for a much lower sum.
This copy is presented in an elegant 19th century frame.
