"Marseilles, Villes d'oeillades!" * "Scent Adieu Sagesse! toute l'heures." * Double-sided color drawing, with notations in French, by Tennant, within images. Mixed media, with watercolor, crayon, pen, and ink on paper. 235x200 mm; 9 1/4x7 7/8 inches, full sheet, the paper once folded in half horizontally, with hard fold (partly separating). Signed "Stephen Tennant" in ink. Recto contains numerous portraits of Marseille locals. A note in the upper right corner reads (in English) "A book doesn't need a precedent." The verso contains a verdant waterside scene of nude women among grapevines, rendered in yellow, with a small menu sketched below signature, reading "Le Café Brasil."
British writer and aristocrat Stephen Tennant cultivated a life of glamour if accomplishing little professionally during his life. As one of the most colorful members of London's "Bright Young Things," the group of Bohemian socialites in the 1920s, he stood out for his flamboyance, beauty, and wit, among his more productive companions who included Harold Acton, Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh, the Mitfords and the Sitwells, though he did inspire numerous characters in their novels. His own literary and artistic ambitions were fostered by such illustrious friends as Willa Cather, E.M. Forster, the Bloomsbury Group members, and Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he had a romantic relationship. The majority of his surviving - and now coveted - writing and artwork was centered around his novel "Lascar," which remained unfinished at his death, despite several decades devoted to its creation. Some of the drawings for Lascar have come on the market and the ones offered here, which bear a strong resemblance to those, may also have been intended for the book.
