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PAUL GAUGUIN Portrait de Stéphane Mallarmé.
Etching and drypoint printed in dark brownish black, 1891. 184x145 mm; 7 1/8x5 3/4 inches, full margins. Second state (of 4), before the burnishing at the right edge of the plate and before cancellation. One of only ten known lifetime impressions in this state. Printed by Delâtre, Paris, for the artist. A superb, richly-inked, dark and early impression.
The second state of this portrait was printed on various papers by the renowned Parisian master printer Eugène Delâtre for the artist himself and were mainly presented by Gauguin (1848-1903) to his friends. The current impression is the tenth impression cited in the Kornfeld catalogue raisonné census in this state.
Gauguin met the poet Stéphane Mallarmé through a mutual friend, the author Charles Morice, in late 1890, and thereafter attended Mallarmé's weekly salon whenever possible. Gauguin completed this etched portrait of Mallarmé in early 1891 as he made preparations to depart Paris for his first sojourn in Tahiti. It was distributed by Gauguin to a handful of like-minded friends, including Morice, Jean Dolent, Daniel de Monfried, Charles Filiger, and Mallarmé himself. The raven positioned in the dark shadow behind the sitter's head references Mallarmé's influential 1875 translation of the famous poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated with five lithographs by Édouard Manet. Kornfeld 12.II.A.
