Jean-François RAFFAËLLI (1850-1924). Autograph manuscript signed, [1890] 17 pages fol. Lecture on art and artists. A pencil note indicates that this lecture was given in Brussels, Liège, Bruges, Charleroi and Antwerp. The manuscript contains numerous erasures and corrections, and additions in blue pencil. Raffaëlli insists on the need for a vocation, because art is not really a career or a livelihood. He distinguishes between the independent path followed by "the great artists of 1830, the Corots, the Millets, the Delacroixes", and the "administrative path" that leads to the Institut: "the Cabanels, the Boulangers, the Bouguereaus were, or are today, the office managers of this veritable administration". The true artist had to face slander, irony and even insults, as well as the public's incomprehension of the novelty of his work. He recalls the scorned thinkers and artists, "like Jean-François Millet, who was accused of socialism under the Empire, a time when it was not good to be a socialist". Only a few would achieve success, and many lost their youth; he quotes Émile Zola, "full of glory today and rich", who said to him: "Ah! to be twenty, that's all there is to it". He evokes the vicissitudes of great geniuses who, without fortune, lived only for their art: Millet, Corot, Delacroix, Berlioz, Carpeaux, etc. Degas said, "In my day, you couldn't make it! There are hundreds of artists "who envy and seek to achieve, through art, the quiet and carefree situation of a sub-head of office at the Ministry of Finance". Art in France is currently organised like a real army, with its generals and promotions, and the artists are its subordinates, following a well-trodden path and expecting rewards. As for earning a living, "I don't know ten real artists who, by making art, have earned an honourable living and been able to endow their daughters. [...] The whole artistic argument of our time is based on these two words: are you in favour of absolute beauty, or are you in favour of the character that is relative beauty? Beauty belongs to academic art, while the beauty of character is blocked and called ugly in order to disqualify it. Boulanger says he teaches beauty: "As if beauty could be taught! Raffaëlli recalls a lecture by Whistler on industrial art, its birth, development and fall: the people "lived in the marvels of art, ate and drank in masterpieces because there was nothing else to eat and drink in"; then came "the glitz, the commonplace, the junk [...] The taste of the shopkeeper then supplanted the science of the artist and everyone accepted the thing [...]. Civilisation leads to a lowering of character and, by reflex, to a lowering in works of art. He cites Lamennais's De l'Art et du Beau, in which Beauty is joined to Utility: this word utility "contains the most marvellous things, starting with love [...] since without it there would be nothing left standing around us [...] Beauty is in reason, in the utility of things, or in what separates them". He gives numerous examples: flowers are beautiful only to attract insects; there is beauty in the bust of Socrates "with his nose crushed into a potato"; in the lion, which may be considered a useless animal, but remains a symbol of courage; and in so many other animals seen as "useless".