5. FELICIEN ROPS (1833-1898) Robbery and prostitution rule the world Circa 1880 Inscribed upper left 'Le vol et la prostitution dominent le monde' ('Theft and prostitution rule the world') Signed lower right Second inscription lower right 'en bon souvenir Watercolour and pencil on paper 24.5 x 17 cm Provenance Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels Private collection, Belgium Exhibition Félicien Rops, Kunstgalerij De Vuyst, Lokeren, 28/3-17/4 1975. Van realisme tot symbolisme, Stichting Sint-Jan, Brugge, 8 juli-15 oktober 1995 Impressionism to Symbolism: Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 7 July-2 October 1994 Bibliography Joris-Karl Huysmans: l'oeuvre érotique de Félicien Rops, la Plume, Paris, n°172, 15 June 1896, pp. 400-401 Robert L. Delevoy, Félicien Rops, Cosmmos monographies, Lebeer Hossman, Brussels, 1985, p.194 (ill. of the 1st variant of the afterword to Les Diaboliques) Guy Cuvelier: Rops et la modernité. oeuvres de la Communauté Française, Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels, 1991, n°41, p.76 (ill.of the etching) Bruno Fornari: De l'impressionisme au symbolisme. L'avant-garde belge 1880-1900, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1994, n°61, pp 217-218 A certificate from Patrick Derom Gallery will be given to the buyer. In 1879, when he had been living in Paris for several years, Félicien Rops illustrated Les Diaboliques by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, a work in which art was no longer content to represent, but revealed the subterranean foundations of the human soul. Two postfaces, echoing the whole, develop the same diagnosis of the world: Prostitution and Madness, like two dark forces, now preside over the order of things. This vision, far from being a mere provocation, is part of a tragic and lucid reading of modernity. In a variation on the theme - Theft and Prostitution Dominate the World - Rops explores, through the medium of soft varnishes, an allegory in which vice is no longer a moral accident, but a fundamental structure of contemporary society. The iconographic device of these works is highly symbolic: a demonic couple on goat's hooves stand atop a terrestrial globe, under a constellated sky. The woman, with her hair in a knot, is naked down to her thighs, flanked by a grimacing figure. The latter's costume varies according to the allegory: buffoon and binoculars to embody madness; bourgeois top hat and spectacles to designate the respectable thief - because, with Rops, theft is no longer the prerogative of the common thief, but that of the ruling class. This choice is not insignificant: Rops asserts that "the more perverse the woman, the more modern she is", thus inverting moral codes to better underline the decadence underlying what is called progress. The watercolour presented here resonates stylistically with Cent légers croquis sans prétention pour réjouir les honnêtes gens (1881), a collection commissioned by the collector Jules Noilly. But what lies behind the irony of the title is an implacable critique of bourgeois pretense. The Diaboliques series foreshadowed the Sataniques series (1882), in which Rops reached the apogee of his critical and visionary power. His resolutely modern visual language was not confined to painting reality: it revealed its underlying truth, that of a world where values were overturned, where morality became spectacle, and where perversion, far from being marginal, became the vibrant heart of civilisation. This is why Rops fascinated his contemporaries - Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine - because, like them, he saw in the corruption of appearances not a decline, but the very condition of knowledge and lucidity.