Portrait d�Arthur Rimbaud = Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud de Rimbaud, Jean Nicolas Arthur, 1854-1891.) Lengrand, Jean Michel, b. 1955 - 2002

St Jean Car�nage (St Barth�lemy), 2002 ����A�RICHLY EVOCATIVE PORTRAIT: The legendary brat-poet is depicted here from the famous photograph of Rimbaud aged seventeen, taken in Paris by Etienne Carjat about December 1871 (three months before Rimbaud stabbed Carjat in a postprandial fracas). Here the poet is transported to the foreground of his later milieu, an African landscape illuminated by a full moon top left. Distant clouds glow pink and yellow. Rimbaud's collar is burgundy velvet; his unruly hair is smoothed. "In the eyes", the artist says, "there is the romanti[ci]sm of a young poet, but also a part of night." In the middle distance, over the poet's left shoulder, la plus haute tour rises from the wetlands: It is a helix of manuscript-paper, "a tower of Babel", the artist says, "where the man wants to go untill [sic] the sky". Over the poet's right shoulder, leaves of manuscript-paper scatter heavenward, one by one becoming folded-paper birds flying off above and behind him, into infinity.�� |||�Oil on panel (41 x 31 cm), signed "Jean Michel Lengrand" lower right.�� |||�Pour une description en fran�ais, voir htt p://www.mag4. net/Rimbaud/album34. html (veuillez supprimer les espaces).�� ||| For further details please contact Jay Dillon Rare Books + Manuscripts, as below. .