Robert Pougheon - Illustration Project For An Anthology Of Italian Poems - 1918-1921 -

The dimensions (14 x 29 cm) are given without margins and refer to the image alone.
The sheet dimensions are 23.5 x 39.8 cm.

In 1918, Poughéon was commissioned to create a series of illustrations for an anthology of Italian poetry. The volume was never published, but the project progressed quite far, as all 146 drawings were engraved. While these prints are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, we have only been able to locate two original drawings, in addition to our own. One is held at the Musée de la Piscine in Roubaix (Inv.: 990-5-335), the other was recently offered at auction (Artcurial, 2025).

The scene depicted here—a nude lady with her arms outstretched beneath an overturned chair; at her feet, a knight in armor—would pose even the most skilled iconographers a challenge. The artist's marginal notes add to the confusion: "Florentine Lady / Domenico Ghirlandejo".

One must read the essay by historian Louis Deltour to decipher and understand Poughéon's artistic approach: "From the beginning of his career, collage gave rise to strange compositions, which bring together, in an undefined space, different characters and objects that evoke an impression of strangeness, similar to that given off by the 'metaphysical painting' of Giorgio de Chirico. To illustrate an anthology of Italian poems that was never published, Pougheon assembled figures in vignettes that had no relationship of scale or narrative to one another (Cat. 39), following a principle he reused in 1935 for the decoration of the town hall of the 14th arrondissement. This collage aesthetic, made possible by the use of tracing paper, appears even more evident in the Fantasies. The artist takes mischievous delight in disconcerting his audience by bringing together in a single scene elements drawn from both Antiquity and the modern world. (Robert Pougheon, A Classicism of Fantasy, exhibition catalog, Paris, 2017, p. 55)