Lamartine - Large Portrait Signed - 1863 - Romanticism - Gustave Levy - China - Burin

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869). Large portrait (45.5 x 37.5 cm) signed by the cantor of Romanticism. 1863

Beautiful chine burin engraving of extreme finesse, enriched with a large signature of Lamartine in ink and that of the engraver Gustave Levy (1819-1894) in pencil.

"Hommage et souvenirs , 1863, Al. de Lamartine"

Portrait after a drawing by Auguste Leloir.

Large and majestic autograph signature of 13 cm.

Size: 45.5 x 37.5 cm

Frame (included): 55 x 45 cm

This portrait, mounted on thick strong cardboard, comes in an elegant modern frame with passe-partout.

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"One evening, do you remember? we sailed in silence;

Only the sound of the oarsmen striking in cadence could be heard in the distance, on the wave and under the skies,

Those harmonious waves.

All at once accents unknown to earth

From the charmed shore struck the echoes;

The flood was attentive, and the voice dear to me

Fell these words:

"O time! suspend your flight, and you, auspicious hours!

Suspend your course:

Let us savor the swift delights

Of the most beautiful of our days!"

(From: Le Lac - Méditations poétiques)

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The end of Lamartine's life was marked by money problems, due to his generosity and taste for vast estates. He returned for a time to youthful memories with Graziella, Raphaël, but soon had to settle for "food" productions, and those commensurate with the author of Méditations poétiques, such as La Vigne et la Maison(1857), would be rare.

At the end of the 1860s, virtually bankrupt, he sold his property in Milly and accepted the help of a regime he disapproved of, but which housed him graciously in Paris, in a chalet in the Bois de Boulogne at the end of today's Avenue Henri-Martin. It was here, at 135 avenue de l'Empereur, not far from today's Square Lamartine, that he died on February 28, 1869.