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Lot Essay
This drawing will be included in the catalogue raisonné of drawings by Victor Hugo being prepared under the direction of Pierre Georgel.
The marvelous and violent spectacle of the sea around the Anglo-Norman archipelago provided Victor Hugo with infinite images that he developed in his drawings and texts. It was during his years in exile in Jersey and Guernsey (1852-70) that the artist was inspired by the rough, unfriendly nature that surrounded him. This nature, difficult and tough, with its windy, long and cold winters, its tremendous waves, violent tempests, provoked his most imaginative 'cosmic visions' (see Victor Hugo. Dessins visionnaires, op. cit., pp. 41-5). These translated also into his darkest writings which describe his most emotional fears in front of the chaos of the elements, his deepest annihilation and dark spirals into the abyss, such as in Les Misèrables, Les Travailleurs de la mer, and William Shakespeare (published respectively in 1862, 1864, 1866).
With a brush, at times just barely dipped in ink or at others fully drenched in it, rendering the images barely visible, he recreates the emotions provoked in him by the weather, objects and places surrounding him. In the present sheet, just with a few strokes, Victor Hugo brings to life boats seen in the distance, coming into sight through the surrounding mist. With a touch of bodycolor, he covers in white the boat at the far right, to give a feeling of the thick fog.
In 1856, the date generally associated to this sheet (see Massin, op. cit.), Hugo writes to Franz Stevens "Are you aware of the state of mind in which I am in, in this splendid solitude in which I live at present, as if perched on the tip of a rock, having all the richest foam of the waves and big clouds outside my window? I live in this immense dream of the ocean, little by little I become a 'sea sleepwalker' [...] It is from this eternal contemplation that I wake up now and write to you" (10 April 1856; published in Massin, op. cit., X, p. 1235).
The present sheet belonged to Paul Meurice (1818-1905), Hugo's longstanding friend (for whom he was one of his wedding's witnesses). Meurice, who pursued his own literary career, took care of the poet's financial and literary interests whilst Hugo was in exile. He also adapted his Nôtre Dame de Paris and Les Misérables for the theater and published posthumously some collections of Hugo's poems.
The marvelous and violent spectacle of the sea around the Anglo-Norman archipelago provided Victor Hugo with infinite images that he developed in his drawings and texts. It was during his years in exile in Jersey and Guernsey (1852-70) that the artist was inspired by the rough, unfriendly nature that surrounded him. This nature, difficult and tough, with its windy, long and cold winters, its tremendous waves, violent tempests, provoked his most imaginative 'cosmic visions' (see Victor Hugo. Dessins visionnaires, op. cit., pp. 41-5). These translated also into his darkest writings which describe his most emotional fears in front of the chaos of the elements, his deepest annihilation and dark spirals into the abyss, such as in Les Misèrables, Les Travailleurs de la mer, and William Shakespeare (published respectively in 1862, 1864, 1866).
With a brush, at times just barely dipped in ink or at others fully drenched in it, rendering the images barely visible, he recreates the emotions provoked in him by the weather, objects and places surrounding him. In the present sheet, just with a few strokes, Victor Hugo brings to life boats seen in the distance, coming into sight through the surrounding mist. With a touch of bodycolor, he covers in white the boat at the far right, to give a feeling of the thick fog.
In 1856, the date generally associated to this sheet (see Massin, op. cit.), Hugo writes to Franz Stevens "Are you aware of the state of mind in which I am in, in this splendid solitude in which I live at present, as if perched on the tip of a rock, having all the richest foam of the waves and big clouds outside my window? I live in this immense dream of the ocean, little by little I become a 'sea sleepwalker' [...] It is from this eternal contemplation that I wake up now and write to you" (10 April 1856; published in Massin, op. cit., X, p. 1235).
The present sheet belonged to Paul Meurice (1818-1905), Hugo's longstanding friend (for whom he was one of his wedding's witnesses). Meurice, who pursued his own literary career, took care of the poet's financial and literary interests whilst Hugo was in exile. He also adapted his Nôtre Dame de Paris and Les Misérables for the theater and published posthumously some collections of Hugo's poems.