Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901). Autograph manuscript with drawings, signed with his monogram, Lettre de Rotrou écrivant de Rouen, pour la première représentation du Cid, [ca. 1875-1880]; 2 pages small folio (30 x 20 cm; split and repairs to one edge).
As a schoolboy, Toulouse-Lautrec writes (with erasures and corrections) this fictitious letter from Rotrou, and adorns it with 5 pen-and-ink drawings at the head and sketches at the end, with attempts at monograms.
Rotrou writes of "the greatest event of the century, the most glorious conquest of the French spirit". The young playwright he had welcomed to Paris and nurtured with his advice had written a play called Le Cid. After recounting the plot, he praises it and concludes: "Nothing like this has ever happened on any theater, far from hideous crimes and horrible massacres. Here are two great feelings that come to battle; love and honor, the one more, imperious, the other more irresistible, the Cid satisfies both."
At the top, Toulouse-Lautrec drew a figure wearing a large hat (or halo), a pair of legs with black socks, a buckled shoe, a figure dancing with her leg raised, a woman in a corset; and at the end, next to four attempts at HTLM monograms, a small head, a bent leg and a small female figure.
Stamped in ink by the Collection Séré de Rivières.
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