24 Works, July 7th. is Félicien Rops' day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #184

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Detail; Les Deux Amies

Watercolor

32.6 x 22.7 cm, 12.83 x 8.94 in

Félicien Rops Museum. Province of Namur

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Les Deux Amies

Watercolor

32.6 x 22.7 cm, 12.83 x 8.94 in

Félicien Rops Museum. Province of Namur

Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism and the Parisian Fin-de Siecle. He was a painter, illustrator, caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker, particularly in intaglio (etching and aquatint).

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Pornocrates, c. 1878

Watercolor, pastel and heightened with gouache

Height: 75 cm (29.5 in); Width: 45 cm (17.7 in)

Musée provincial Félicien Rops

Various interpretations for the work exist. The woman can be seen as a powerful female, led by the hog, which can be seen as an image of a man in a bestial, submissive and ignorant state, kept in check by the woman. The pig with golden tail can also be seen as an allegory for luxury, or even as an animal of the devil, a symbol of fornication, steering the woman in blindness. In any case the work represents Rops' vision of the woman of his time: a femme fatale who was increasingly assertive, ruthless and seductive. "She was the human animal viciously depicted by Félicien Rops as "Pornokrates", ruler of Proudhon's "Pornocracy", a creature blindly guided by a hog, the symbol of Circe, the bestial representative of all sexual evil". More on Pornocrates

In 1851, Rops enrolled at the Université libre de Bruxelles to study philosophy in preparation for a law degree. There, he met several Namur friends and formed new relationships, including one of prime importance with the author Charles De Coster. He quickly found his place among the most active student circles: the "Société des Joyeux" and the "Cercle des Crocodiles". He became their official artist and, with great talent, he learned the art of lithography. Two years later, he enrolled at the "Atelier libre Saint-Luc", one of the meeting places for Brussels bohemians, where he exchanged avant-garde ideas. There he met Artan, Dubois, Charles De Groux, Constantin Meunier, and more, the future upholders of realism in Belgium.

Félicien Rops

Combat between a man and a molossus in the Walloon country, C. 1890-1891

Oil on canvas

60 x 73 cm

National museum of fine arts  

The Walloon country or region of Wallonia occupies the whole of southern Belgium and is mostly a French-speaking area.

In Combat between a man and a molossus in the Walloon country we observe the chaos of the public of a spectacle of the popular culture of the XIX century: in an improvised ring a half-naked man fights with a mastiff, who seems to be winning the battle with the force of his jaw on his arm. On the left, a figure reclining in a chair, organizer of the brawl and, perhaps, administrator of the bets, harangues the fight adopting an impossible position. Beside him, a rude woman in a yellow cap is holding a baby in her arms. The show is hardly suitable for a normal child, but here it is a dying infant whose head resembles a skull. The little one is as degraded as the world around him. In the audience, light touches of the brush give shape to the faces, those in the first rows are more defined, to end up dissolving and mixing with the background. Two resolute women with a greater material burden stand out. Their white fur and hairstyles evoke eighteenth-century courtesans. One seems to be abstracted from what is happening around her, the other looks beyond the fighter, perhaps to evade the old seducer who approaches her.

Thus, this work expresses the program of the young Rops in 1863, whose greatest desire was to capture the "physiognomy of his time" in which "the love for brutal enjoyment, money concerns and petty interests have stuck on the faces of our contemporaries a sinister mask”. More on this painting

"Rops am I, virtuous am I not, hypocrite I do not deign". The Belgian artist followed this virtuous path his entire life. His work and his way of life reflect the freedom of spirit and creativity that characterise his drawings, engravings and illustrations.

Félicien Joseph Victor Rops (Belgian, 1833–1898)

Mademoiselle de Maupin

Watercolor, wash and charcoal on paper

24.8 x 18.9 cm. (9.8 x 7.4 in.)

Private collection

Mademoiselle de Maupin is a French epistolary novel written by Théophile Gautier and published in 1835. The author's first major work, the novel recounts the life of Madeleine de Maupin and her gallant adventures. Operating as a manifesto of parnassus and of the doctrine of " art for the sake of  art  " of which Gautier is thus the precursor, the text is famous for its preface which denounces the moralist or utilitarian visions of literature. His conception of art proclaims its independent and useless characteristics: it aims only for the beautiful. More on Mademoiselle de Maupin

An exceptional engraver and drawer, Félicien Rops captured and anticipated women's bodies with great modernity. Abandoning conventional formats of the time, the artist created scenes filled with humour, tenderness and insolence for the pleasure of the public. The titles of his works are barely innocent and bear witness to a rich imagination. No subject was off limits, not death, or the Holy Scriptures, which are illustrated from the very unusual angle of Saint Anthony faced with the temptation of the flesh (See below). Rops lived in a society that was stuck in a rut, where the bourgeoisie, dressed very properly, preached the values that confirmed their principles of appearances and cleanliness. He was stifled by the overwhelming conformism and very quickly his works and, especially his "nudes", attempted to explore what lay behind bourgeois culture. Rops undressed women not in order to sully them but to exalt their strength for life faced with the power of death and of an establishment restricted by economic certainties and moral or religious dogma. At the time, sex was synonymous with scandal owing to the puritanism imposed by those in charge; Rops used this theme freely, refusing to become an artist tolerated by an intolerant society.

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

La Tentation de saint Antoine/ The Temptation of Saint Anthony, c. 1878

Colored pencil, heightened with gouache, on paper

Height: 73.8 cm (29 in); Width: 54.3 cm (21.3 in)

Cabinet des estampes de la bibliothèque royale Albert Ier

Saint Anthony or Antony (c. 251–356) was a Christian monk from Egypt, revered since his death as a saint. He is known as the Father of All Monks. His feast day is celebrated on January 17 among the Orthodox and Catholic churches and on Tobi 22 in the Egyptian calendar used by the Coptic Church.

The biography of Anthony's life helped to spread the concept of Christian monasticism, particularly in Western Europe via its Latin translations. He is often erroneously considered the first Christian monk. Anthony was, however, the first to go into the wilderness (about ad 270), a geographical move that seems to have contributed to his renown. Accounts of Anthony enduring supernatural temptation during his sojourn in the Eastern Desert of Egypt inspired the often-repeated subject of the temptation of St. Anthony in Western art and literature.

Anthony is appealed to against infectious diseases, particularly skin diseases. In the past, many such afflictions, including ergotism, erysipelas, and shingles, were historically referred to as St. Anthony's fire. More on Saint Anthony

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Crucified Love

Oil on panel

47 x 24 cm

Private collection

Félicien Rops 

Le Calvair (Les Sataniques)/ Calvary(The Satanists)

Oil on canvas

26 x 18 cm

Private collection

 Félicien Rops (Belgian, Namur 1833–1898 Essonnes)

The Sacrifice, from "The Satanic Ones", ca. 1882

 "Les Sataniques" (plate IV)

Soft ground etching, reproduced in heliogravure

17 15/16 x 13 9/16 in. (45.5 x 34.4 cm)

In its last series, The Satanic (1882), Rops influenced by the decadent spirit of the late 19 th century. He describes a woman entirely subject to her own impulses and linked to evil in a pact with Satan. The woman loses control over her body or her emotions to mate with the devil. 

Felicien Rops

À un dîner d’athées/ At a dinner of atheists, c. 1879–85

Pencil and pastel on paper

25 by 17cm

Private collection

This is the artist’s first drawing for a scene in a story in which a French officer relates an unusual tale of lust, depravity and self-loathing. Although it features the prerequisite broken-down door, burning candle, corpse and the provocatively exposed body of a beautiful woman, the drawing is less an illustration than a suggestive evocation that gives free rein to the viewer’s imagination. While the character Rosalba represents the age-old misogynistic notion of woman as an incarnation of evil, her pose here, echoing a Christ on the Cross, might suggest that she also deserves our pity. More on this painting

On 28 June 1857, Rops married Charlotte Polet de Faveaux, the daughter of a judge at the Court of Namur, whom he had known since university. The spouses lived in turn in Namur, Brussels and at Thozée Castle, near Mettet, a manor house which Charlotte inherited on the death of one of her uncles. Rops took advantage of this large estate to invite many artists and friends to his home, in particular Charles Baudelaire. "Baudelaire is the man I most want to meet. We met because of a strange love […]: the passion for skeletons", explained Félicien Rops to Baudelaire's editor, the Frenchman Auguste Poulet-Malassis. As for the poet of "Les Fleurs du Mal" (Flowers of Evil), it was in a letter to Edouard Manet that he explained: "Rops is the only true artist I met in Belgium." Baudelaire and Rops met in Namur on 24 April 1864 and their encounter led to a great friendship based on mutual admiration.

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Le moulage/ The molding, c. between 1878 and 1881

Pencil, gouache, stone chalk, white and black chalk

Height: 21.8 cm (8.5 in); Width: 14.9 cm (5.8 in)

Galerie Patrick Derom, Brüssel

Rops' contacts with Parisian life date back to his meeting with the journalist and author Alfred Delvau at the start of the 1860s. It was also Delvau who presented Rops to the editor Auguste Poulet-Malassis in Paris in 1863. He entrusted many projects to the engraver. These were mainly illustrations of licentious works. In Paris, Rops moved among the artists' circles of the Café Guerbois and the Café Larochefoucauld. He was received by Victor Hugo… He impressed many of his peers with his extensive culture and his prodigious memory. 

Félicien Rops

La mort au bal masqué/ Death at the Ball, 1895

Helio engraving

45,7 x 29,9 cm (pl.) 

Private collection

Felicien Rops  (1833–1898)

The Dance of Death

Etching on paper

55 x 37 cm

P. BdM Collection

 Félicien Rops

Mors syphilitica

Engraving with drypoint

55.4 x 34.9 cm

Private collection

In 1866, Poulet-Malassis published Les Epaves (Wreckage), a collection of censored poems from Les Fleurs du Mal. Rops created the frontispiece for it and designed La Mort au bal (Death at the Ball) (See above), La Mort qui danse (Dancing Death) (See above) and other Mors syphilitica (See above)  in that same "Baudelairian dream world". He also illustrated a major work of French language Belgian literature: La Légende et les aventures d’Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak (The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak) by his friend Charles De Coster.

Félicien Rops

Coin de rue, quatres heures du matin (Parodie humaine), Street corner, four o'clock in the morning (Human parody)

Pastel, coloured chalks and watercolour on paper

22.5 by 15cm., 8¾ by 6in.

Private collection

Félicien Joseph Victor Rops (Belgian, 1833–1898)

The drunken Dandy

Color engraving

30 x 43.5 cm. (11.8 x 17.1 in.)

Private collection

Félicien Rops

Le Bouge à matelots, The Sailor's Bouge, c. 1875

Watercolor, pastel and heightened with gouache

60.4 x 46.5 cm

Félicien Rops Museum, Province of Namur

Félicien Rops loved Paris. In 1882, he wrote that he wanted to return there as soon as possible "in order to find the little intoxication there". Could it be frivolity that gave him so much inspiration? This scene in a cabaret already gives an idea of ​​the atmosphere that pleased him so much. More on this painting

Felicien Rops

L'attrapade/ The catch, c. 1877

Oil and watercolour on board (recto); pen and ink on board (verso)

62 by 43cm., 24½ by 17in.

Private collection

Félicien Rops

The Cherub's Song

Gouache, pastel and pencil on a prepared board

23.9 by 16.3cm., 9 1/2 by 6 1/2 in

Private collection

Félicien Rops

Young provocative lady

Watercolor and pencil on paper

20,8 x 15cm ; 8 1/4 x 6 in

Private collection

Rops settled definitively in Paris in 1874, where he lived with Aurélie and Léontine Duluc, whom he had met six years earlier. He had many lovers, but only his relationship with these two sisters, both dressmakers, endured. He continued to illustrate the works of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joséphin Péladan, Félicien Champsaur and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

La Dame au pantin et à l'éventail/ The Lady with the puppet and the fan, c. 1873

Collotype, heightened with gouache, colored pencil and watercolor

Height: 32 cm (12.5 in); Width: 22 cm (8.6 in)

Musée provincial Félicien Rops

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898) 

La Dame au pantin/ The Lady with the Puppin, c. 1877

Watercolor, colored pencil and heightened gouache on a delicate pencil sketch

Height: 40 cm (15.7 in); Width: 28 cm (11 in)

Sammlung Babut du Marès

Félicien Rops

La Dame au puppin, c. 1883-1885

Gouache, colored pencil, graphite, black chalk and pastel

39.4 x 27.4 cm

King Baudouin Foundation

Les Dames au puppin (1873-1890): four drawings make up this series, produced over nearly 20 years. From simple casserole in a boudoir of 19th century watching, amused, a man transformed into a puppet, the woman transforms into a murderer, knife on her belt. Gold coins flow from the belly of the puppet: the venal woman manipulates the man and takes his wealth from him. "Ecce Homo", Here is the Man, says the legend of the work, while a dance of death takes the bourgeois to their final destination. In this decadent end of the century, many authors and artists represent a femme fatale and domineering manipulating men. Through this series, Rops is in keeping with the spirit of his time and constructs a discourse saturated with symbols and cultural references. "The woman's puppet man, the devil's puppet woman", writes Joséphin. More on this painting

In 1882, Rops composed the striking series Les Sataniques (The Satanic Ones): five watercolours, a prelude to the series of engravings with texts by the artist commented by Joris-Karl Huysmans in "Certains" (Certain Ones). Joséphin Péladan describes them as a poem of the possession of woman by the devil, in which Rops elevates himself to the status of Dürer whilst, more than ever, continuing to be Rops. Pornocratès created a scandal at the exhibition of XX in 1886. A retrospective of his work was scheduled in 1896 at the Hôtel Drouot, at the same time as the publication of a special issue devoted to him by the magazine "La Plume".

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

Le sphinx, c. between 1878 and 1881

Gouache, watercolor and colored pencil

Height: 29.7 cm (11.6 in); Width: 20.4 cm (8 in)

Galerie Maurice Keitelman

It was in 1882 that Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, the dandy and decadent writer par excellence, gave permission to the publisher Lemerre (Paris) to republish his short stories gathered under the title Les Diaboliques thatwere released by Dentu in 1874. Lemerre called on Rops to illustrate the 9 short stories that make up the book. Rops carefully reads each story and draws inspiration from it to make each image a summary of the spirit of the text. Barbey will only moderately appreciate the work of Rops which, however, was very popular with readers of the time. Rops captures, in this series, the spirit of modernity of his century, by uniting sensuality and morbidity. The Sphinx is the first illustration of the book Les Diaboliques, it is undoubtedly for this reason that Rops drew a color drawing of it. A woman entwined in a stone sphinx is spied on by a Satan dressed dandy of 19 th century. More on this painting

Rops, whose health was deteriorating, worked increasingly in the peaceful atmosphere of the Demi-Lune, his property in Essonne near Paris. There, he devoted himself to his passion for botany and created new varieties of roses. Painting was a refuge for him. He died on 23 August 1898 at his property surrounded by Léontine, Aurélie, his daughter Claire and his closest friends.

Félicien Rops  (1833–1898)

La Plage de Heyst, c. 1886

Oil on canvas

37 x 54.5 cm

Félicien Rops Museum, Province of Namur

"My white dunes, my beautiful blond Flemish, my vast horizons and the pearly sea like no other, which have been my joy for so long, and which I hope will continue to do so!" Rops likes to paint in nature at the North Sea. He sets up his easel on the beach and paints the cloudy skies of these new resorts for the Belgian and foreign bourgeoisie who are discovering the leisure society. His Heyst Beach, with its touches of light and scattered colors, the female silhouette braving the wind, takes on the airs of impressionist painting. Rops' palette becomes lighter, the technique is subtle, the atmosphere predominates. "There may be much to be hoped for from a bizarre painting movement which now begins under the name of the School of the Impressionists & is characterized by a light painting of the kind that is done a lot now in Belgium but more It is a lot of grotesque things but there are three fellows there, Caillebotte & Degas & Monet (not Manet) who are of a pretty strength & very artistic. More on this painting

His home town created a museum in his honour: https://www.museerops.be In addition to practical information, you will find the artist's main works, biography, and more on this site. More on Félicien Rops

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

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