Page 12 - Gallery 19c Volume 3_Les Types de Paris_digital_Neat

We may not know why Hennique never participated in which he would then illustrate. In turn, Mallarmé
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the project, but Mallarmé’s intervention is quite well received rough sketches from Raffaëlli for assorted
documented. In the development process, sometimes street characters, such as Le marchand d’ail et d’oignons
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Raffaëlli provided rough ideas and sketches; other times (the garlic and onion seller), Le cantonnier (the road
he would prepare illustrations based on the text he had mender), Le crieur d’imprimés (the newsboy), and
received, as is evident in his letter to Mirbeau: “Here La femme du carrier (the quarryman’s wife). Raffaëlli
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are my topics for you to choose from for the 100 lines; instructed Mallarmé to write alongside his sketches and
teachers; ragpickers; petit bourgeois; metalworker; heavy notes. The next section of this catalogue reproduces
laborers; tradesmen of the streets: glazier, tinsmith, les “Petites gens de la rue” and illustrates the result of
chair repairman, etc.; the small vendors.” Mallarmé the collaboration between Raffaëlli and Mallarmé.
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received the same instructions for his section, although On each full page, the poet’s verses are framed by the
his chapter would in the end be solely dedicated to the artist’s precisely outlined and modeled drawings, which
“Petites gens de la rue” (the little people of the streets). dominate the background. Their large size suggests a
In August 1888, Raffaëlli asked Mallarmé to send him his grandeur far beyond the humble occupations of the
sonnet on a lavender peddler, “Marchande de lavandes,” people they portray.

Fig. 4: Le Perron d’Edmond de Goncourt, photograph by Lecomte Joseph Napoléon Primoli, 1890. From left to right: Jean Ajalbert, Henri de Régnier,
Jean-François Raffaëlli, Léon Daudet, Roger Max, Alphonse Daudet, Edmond de Goncourt, Madame Daudet, J.H.Rosny aîné, Georges Rodenbach,
Eugène Carrière, Frantz Jourdain, Gustave Geffroy, Georges Lecomte, Gustave Toudouze, Paul Alexis, Léon Hennique et François de Nion.

The seventh installment of Les Types de Paris, published the Impressionists. Mallarmé helped define the new
in March 1889, is an excellent example of the stimulating school of painting while Manet, Gauguin, and Renoir
reciprocity that developed from the interrelations of the made portraits of him and Degas photographed him.
intellectual scene of the time, in this case specifically By the 1880s, Mallarmé’s writings were internationally
between a visual artist, Raffaëlli, and a distinguished known, and by 1888, his friendship with Raffaëlli was
poet, Stéphane Mallarmé. Born in Paris in 1842, established. In a letter, however, Raffaëlli reveals
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Mallarmé began his career as an English teacher after that Mallarmé was not among his first choices in
he developed a passion for Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), his Types de Paris selection process, mentioning his
whom Baudelaire had discovered and introduced to favoring Hennique, perhaps because his work was more
French readers. Influenced by Victor Hugo (1802–1885), accessible. Mallarmé’s writings had the reputation
Théophile Gautier (1811–1872), and Charles Baudelaire of being obscure, enigmatic even, and disconcerting
(1821–1867), Mallarmé published his first poems in to his readers. Yet, Mallarmé’s dark and unusual style
1862. His career took a turn when in 1871 he moved is perfectly exacerbated in Les Types de Paris. Perhaps
back to Paris and in 1873 met the painter Édouard the key to entering Mallarmé’s world lies in Raffaëlli’s
Manet (1832–1883) (fig. 5), who introduced him to illustrations.
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Fig. 5: Édouard Manet, Portrait de Stéphane Mallarmé, 1876, Musée d’Orsay (RF 2661).

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