COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, known as) [Saint-Sauveur - Lot 37

COLETTE (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, known as) [Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, 1873 - Paris, 1954], French novelist. Autograph signed. Undated ; 5 pages in-4° on blue paper. "Sculptor or painter, the artist, when he chisels or paints a human face, shows early if he has talent, a deep knowledge, a familiarity. Will I be atavistic, of the human form, of the skeleton and of the expressive pulp that covers it. This makes exhibitions like the one at Galerie Briant rare and endearing. Robert, it is the astonishment of the painter or sculptor in front of the beast, his ignorance sometimes, his emotion often. I remember the frantic surprise of an intelligent parliamentarian - there are some - in front of a large dragonfly I had captured, and its cry of interrogation: - There there! What's she there? - But where there? - There, those globes on each side of her head, those transparent, iridescent spheres, those bulbs that reflect the blue of the water, the green of the trees, all the colours of the universe? - But those are his eyes, come on! The politician looked at me, dreamy, incredulous: - His eyes... It can't be... It would be known... I didn't see any dragonflies at Briant-Robert's. But such a sketch of a cat, such a statue of a dog, such a portrait of a fawn, such a graceful white work, a funerary monument for a young dead doe, and again figures of nocturnal birds, and a commemorative series, if I dare to write about Percheron's rumps, reveal - obviously the study under the master's degree as well as under the still humble study - a kind of wonder. ...] The generous bulldog of Toulouse-Lautrec forgives everything to our two-legged mediocrity. Here and there, the animal balance and its apparent paradoxes, the luster of the big horse eyes and rumps, the marine scroll described by a fawn tail tell of the artist's curiosity, deference and fascination. Everything here takes us away, rests us from man. »