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Oeuvre indisponible à la vente, elle a été proposée dans le cadre de l'exposition "BRAFA 2023"

Fleur du mal, 1889

Oil on canvas, signed lower right and dated 89
189.50 x 94 cm

Provenance : 
Estate of the artist  
Galerie Alexis Pentcheff, Marseille 
Private collection, Portugal

History :
Salon of 1890, n°1619

Certificate of inclusion in the catalog raisonné of Henri Martin being prepared by Madame Marie-Anne Destrebecq-Martin.

Review by Gustave Geffroy in La Vie Artistique, "Les Salons de 1890 et 1891", 1892, p.156 :

"The Flower of Evil, by M. Henri Martin, is more delicate and strange. It is almost painted with dots, if my eyes do not deceive me, in a range of soft greyness. The attitude of this slender and strange girl is daring, and the lines are pretty and graceful. But she holds in her hand a vulgar pansy from the lawns of our gardens: it is becoming decidedly difficult to invent a novel flower of evil."

Certificate of authenticity from Mr. Cyrille Martin dated December 19, 2017 Certificate of inclusion in the catalog raisonné of Henri Martin being prepared by Mrs. Marie-Anne Destrebecq-Martin dated December 19, 2017

 

Fleur du Mal, a female figure of symbolism 

On a bare background, a pale young woman stands, also naked, with no other adornment than long untied hair that falls to her waist. One of her raised hands slips into it, intertwining red poppy flowers with her hair, while in her other hand she ostensibly holds a colored pansy.
Flowers at her feet, in her hands, around her neck and in her hair, on the top of which a halo of light descends to surround her.

Only two elements make up this painting: a naked woman's body, in a hieratic position, whose modelling recalls that of an antique statue, and various kinds of flowers, which punctuate with touches of color a rather monochrome environment. The expression of the face, rather mysterious, does not seem to tell us much more about this strange mise en scène.

It is two other clues, more formal, that will allow us to advance some interpretations about this work. 

First of all, just below the signature, the date that is affixed informs us about a particular period of creation. 
1889: this is the height of symbolism and we know that Henri Martin was particularly sensitive to the expression of this movement which exalts the imaginary and spirituality in reaction to naturalism and more generally, to the social context of galloping industrialization. 
In the last quarter of the 19th century, a certain esoteric retreat became apparent in all artistic fields, particularly in painting and literature. The Kabbalistic order of the Rose+Croix, founded by Sar Mérodack Péladan (Joséphin Péladan 1858-1918), was undoubtedly the most extreme temptation, which for a time seduced Henri Martin. But the artist will quickly distance himself from it.

Henri Martin's symbolism is especially evident in his attraction to subjects inherited from the literary, mythological or religious tradition, as evidenced by works such as L'Apparition de Clémence Isaure aux troubadours, Les Poètes du Gay Savoir, L'homme entre le Vice et la Vertu, Apollon et les muses...
The painting, presented at the Salon de la Nationale in 1890, bears the title Fleur du Mal, referring to a literary work less distant from the artist than the medieval sources to which he readily refers. This title evokes, of course, Charles Baudelaire's poetic collection, which was first published in 1857 and which has continued to inspire subsequent generations of artists, even to the present day. 
At this point, the title of the work allows us to associate with this mysterious portrait both the appeal of an assumed poetic melancholy and the audacity of a sensual and corrosive femininity, far from the ethereal muses that are more often familiar to the artist.

Let's stop for a moment also, since we have entered symbolism, on the language of the flowers that are presented to us. The colored thought, brandished like a banner by this white and naked arm, does not doubt say anything other than what the word that designates it reveals to us: it is thought, meditation, reflection, in other words, man's own. 
As for the poppy, fallen to the ground and mixed with the female hair, on the other side of the composition, it evokes more by its fragility, its scarlet color, its more indefinite form, more rural, the female side. Symbolizing sleep and death in several cultures, the poppy flower is today associated with the memory of the soldiers who died in the Great War, but in Henri Martin's time, it is not forbidden to think that this symbolism of remembrance was perhaps already attached, in one way or another, to the flower.

Another reference that could be invoked in the study of this work by Henri Martin is Ophelia of Hamlet, this feminine icon with flowery hair, whose floating corpse is carried by the river, but who is not naked in literature. 
So how was the connection made with our painting? 
A bust portrait of Nellie Melba by Henri Martin led us down this path. The singer (who inspired the famous frozen dessert that has come down to us) was painted by the artist in the role of Ophelia that she played in Ambroise Thomas' opera based on the Shakespearean work. The same flowers in the long hair and a thought in the neck, the distant look ... we know nothing of what led to this representation if not that in this role, the singer has also inspired other painters. 
From Hamlet to Baudelaire, there is only a small step, which the inspired poet easily crosses. "Baudelaire lived with Hamlet, that is to say, with another himself", says his friend Théodore de Banville. Baudelaire had constantly under the glance, hung in his apartment of the island Saint-Louis, the complete collection of Hamlet of Delacroix and inevitably, the two literary works, Hamlet and Flowers of the Evil, maintain a close correspondence of the melancholy.

But why Fleur du Mal in the singular? It seems that the painter wishes to lead us on a certain path through his title. 
And if Hamlet meditates on his skull, this naked woman symbolically holds out a thought to us. 
At this point, we have already highlighted the relationship of this work with poetry and theater, which are characteristic of the artist's inspirations and, more broadly, those of the symbolist movement. Drawing from these literary sources, the representation reaches a more general character. 
Leaving little room for nuance, a certain idea of the woman is also characteristic of symbolism. Femme fatale and temptress whose archetype is the biblical Salome or virginal muse with sacrificial ascendancy, such seems to be the dilemma or the unique choice offered to the image of the woman among the symbolists.

Henri Martin operates here in Fleur du Mal a sort of fusion of these two antitheses. 
Neither completely temptress despite her nudity, nor completely holy despite the light that envelops her and the chastity of her physiognomy, the woman is a Fleur du Mal only for what she is, that is to say, as nature has engendered her, in a natural contradiction.