Benjamin perronnet V5 - Flipbook - Page 56
Illustrates letter XVII of part four of Julie ou la Nouvelle
Héloïse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s epistolary novel 昀椀rst
published in 1761, which recounts the impossible love a昀昀air
between Julie d’Étange, a young Swiss noblewoman, and
her tutor, St Preux. In letter XVII, St Preux tells his friend
Milord Edouard Bomston about a walk he took to show
Julie a promontory from which he had been able to observe
her when she had asked him to leave a few years earlier,
and where he had engraved his lover’s name on the rock.
At the end of his novel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself
described precisely how to illustrate the scene:
«(...) two quarters of rock that have fallen from
above and can be used as a table and a seat must
be almost at the edge of the esplanade; (...) in the
perspective of the hills of the Pays de Vaud that
we see in the distance, we distinguish towns on the
shore (...).
On this esplanade stand Julie and her Friend,
the only two 昀椀gures in the illustration. The Friend
places a hand on one of the two rocks and shows
her, with the other hand and from a little distance,
characters engraved on the surrounding rocks. At
the same time, he speaks to her with 昀椀re; we read
in Julie’s eyes the tenderness caused by his speech
and the objects he reminds her of; but we also
read there that virtue presides, and fears nothing
of these dangerous memories».
No proof of the engraving after this drawing is known,
nor does it appear to have been made, although JacquesLouis Copia engraved 昀椀ve other scenes from La Nouvelle
Héloise after Prud’hon. They seem to have been made for
an edition published in Rouen in 1794 or 1795, of which no
copy is known to exist, and for another published in Paris in
1804, of which no copy with the engravings is today known.
The known proofs of the engravings exist only detached
and separated. Gui昀昀rey catalogues four other preparatory
drawings for the Nouvelle Héloise illustrations, all of
the same technique and dimensions, while another -was
exhibited in the major Prud’hon retrospective of 1997-1998
at the Grand Palais and the Metropolitan Museum.
In his illustrations, Prud’hon follows the writer’s
recommendations with great 昀椀delity, and succeeds in
transposing the most remarkable episodes of the novel into
ambitiously composed and highly 昀椀nished scenes, despite
their small size.
A quickly sketched preparatory study for the present
drawing recently went on sale (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Le Serment
ou Les monuments des anciennes
amours, collection privée
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