GONCOURT (de), Edmond. La maison d’un Artiste.
Paris, Charpentier, 1881.

In-8 (187 x 122 mm), 2 volumes, T1 - (4) ff., 357 pp., (1) f., T2 - (2) ff., 382 pp., (1) f. 
Paperback, modern folder and slipcase.

First edition on publisher's paper, after 10 on Chine and 50 on Hollande.
Extremely rare autograph letter from the author ‘to Guy de Maupassant / friendly memory / Ed Goncourt’.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) is mentioned 167 times in the Journal des Goncourt; "that's not much, considering the importance given to other contemporaries and the length of his presence in the Journal: twenty years. It seems too much when you read Edmond's bitter reflections on the author of Bel-Ami". (Benhamou).
La Maison d'un artiste, published in 1881, retraces Edmond de Goncourt's ‘home-museum’ in Auteuil. More than a simple inventory of the objects and works gathered in his home, the work is an intellectual self-portrait, a declaration of aesthetic faith, an attempt to fix in writing what the personal museum could not eternalise. It is a moment of reading suspended in time, combining a love of curiosity cabinets with a love of nineteenth-century modernity.

Through the description of his paintings, engravings, fabrics, sculptures and books, Goncourt tells the story of his century - or at least the sensibility of a certain nineteenth century: delicate, Japanese, enamoured of refinement. The work is also a natural extension of the Diary he kept with his brother Jules: we find the same acuity, the same taste for precise notation, the same desire to ensure the survival of a form of elegance threatened by modernity.
Maupassant's personal copy, on which he worked for his article ‘Maison d'artiste’, published in Le Gaulois on 12 March 1881 to mark the book's publication.

Here are a few extracts:
‘This is not a philosphical work like Ideas and Sensations; it is the story of his furniture.’
'It now boasts the finest and most comprehensive collection of 18th-century French art.'
‘From the moment you walk in, you feel like you're in the home of a curiosity-lover’.
4The walls everywhere are lined with books, precious books, of which he will give us a detailed catalogue. In the drawers of the bookcases lie priceless albums from Japan that are worth fortunes. He was perhaps the first person to understand the artistic value, the grace and the charm of the Japanese art that inspires our painters today.4
'Next to the room where these marvels are exhibited is another, a masterpiece of colour. I won't attempt to describe it, but I will tell you its singular purpose. It is, for the writer, a “means of inspiration”, the cabinet of cerebral excitement.'
'The ground floor is the domain of the 18th century. This collection is unique. We remember the admirable drawings he lent to the Alsace-Lorraine exhibition. Here we have Watteau, one of the greatest masters, Boucher, Fragonard and Chardin. A priceless mantelpiece by Clodion'.

Fine restoration to the spine and scattered brown spots for this unique piece of nineteenth-century literary history.
Vicaire, III, 1061-2 ; Carteret, I, 359. Benhamou Noëlle. Maupassant dans le Journal des Goncourt. In: Cahiers Edmond et Jules de Goncourt n°10, 2003. Les cent ans du premier prix Goncourt. pp. 283-304.