Page 99 - Pierre Durand Collection Including Chinese Art and Porcelain Sothebys Jan 27 2022

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LUC-OLIVIER MERSON (PARIS 1846-1920) of which the première took place in Bayreuth in the Summer of 1876. While
Alberich and the Rhinemaidens the project was never completed, several sketches by Merson for it are
signed with initials ‘L.O.M.’ (lower left) known, and at least one related lithograph was produced (A.-N. Stévenin,
pen and black ink, black and white chalk, on brown wove paper ‘Luc-Olivier Merson illustrateur’, in L’Étrange Monsieur Merson, exhib. cat.,
22Ω x 16¿ in. (57 x 41 cm) Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2008-2009, pp. 224-226). Depicting the
first scene of the tetralogy’s first opera, Das Rheingold, in which the dwarf
$5,000-7,000
Alberich steals the gold entrusted to the Rhinemaidens, this print closely
PROVENANCE: follows a large and highly finished drawing dated 1885, which was recently
with Artemis Fine Arts, Paris. acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2013.924). The present
drawing must have been made in preparation of this final design, generally
In 1885, Merson was commissioned by the art critic Arthur Duparc to
similar but different in the overall layout, with the gold at the bottom of the
illustrate scenes from Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen,
composition, rather than at the top, as in the solution ultimately chosen.