Paris (AFP)
An unpublished drawing by Victor Hugo, "Départ du ballon", sold for 37,500 euros Wednesday in Paris, twice its high estimate (18,000 euros), announced the auction house Stoheby's.
This beautiful drawing by the author of Les Misérables, who was also a talented designer, shows a balloon with a basket rising above the roofs and steeples of Paris, in milky colors. It bears witness to the war of 1870 and the very humiliating period of the siege of Paris by the Prussians.
"Départ du ballon" is a tribute to the mounted balloons used during the siege to communicate outside the city. Among the 67 who rose in 1870 and 1871, that of September 26, 1870 carried leaflets written by Victor Hugo which were dropped over enemy lines.
The photographer Nadar had asked Hugo if another balloon, on October 18, 1870, could be baptized with his name: "I do not ask anything better than to go to heaven by you!", Replied the poet.
The balloon "Victor Hugo" rose from the Tuileries garden with cries of "Long live the Republic". He was carrying mail. Hugo kept Nadar's invitation, which he stuck on his intimate Notebooks, after having torn from the envelope the stamp which represented Napoleon III, whom he scornfully nicknamed "Napoleon the Little".
This lot was awarded during the final phase of the dispersal started in 2011 of the important R. & BL literary collection, built up over more than sixty years. The sale took place online since June 11, organized by Sotheby's in association with Binoche and Giquello.
This last part of books and autographs from the 19th and 20th centuries paid tribute to French literature.
The original drawing will be included in the catalog raisonné of Victor Hugo's drawings.
© 2020 AFP