![JOHN BROWN, "THE CHRIST OF THE BLACKS" HUGO (Victor). [John Brown]. Drawing by Victor...](https://cdn.drouot.com/d/lot/phare/67/160606/b0e8df8e897a6c8604ebb6fe1b37adf7)
Lot n° 3
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2000 - 3000
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Result
: 6 048EUR
JOHN BROWN, "THE CHRIST OF THE BLACKS" HUGO (Victor). [John - Lot 3
JOHN BROWN, "THE CHRIST OF THE BLACKS" HUGO (Victor). [John Brown]. Drawing by Victor Hugo engraved in aquatint on blue ground by Paul Chenay, with AUTOGRAPHIC TITLE BY VICTOR HUGO, in ink, in lower margin: "Le Christ des noirs". 52.3 x 33.3 cm, 67.3, 46.3 cm; framed under glass; some marginal wetness. PRINT PRIOR TO THE LETTER, prior to the first destroyed print run and a fortiori to the second circulated print run. AUTOGRAPHIC SIGNED ENVOIR FROM VICTOR HUGO "to M. Ségé" (in lower margin). The painter-engraver Alexandre Ségé (1819-1885) is known, among other things, for having painted a scene inspired by Victor Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la mer: this painting adorned the vestibule of the mansion on avenue d'Eylau where the writer lived from 1878 onwards. A work at the crossroads of Victor Hugo's abolitionist battles, against slavery and the death penalty FROM JOHN CHARLES TAPNER TO JOHN BROWN. In 1854, Victor Hugo made 4 drawings of a hanged man to denounce the hanging of a Guernsey criminal, John Charles Tapner, which he titled Ecce or Ecce lex (Jean Massin and Bernadette Grynberg, no. 499 to 502)... When, in December 1859, the engraver Paul Chenay visited him at Hauteville House, Victor Hugo was busy protesting against the trial and hanging of the American anti-slavery activist John Brown: he authorized the artist to translate one of his 1854 drawings into an engraving, giving it the new title John Brown and the subtitles Crux nova and Pro Christo sicut Christus - and to distribute the print. On January 10, 1860, he wrote: "Everything that contributes to the great goal of Liberty is my duty, and I will be happy if this drawing, multiplied by your art, can contribute to keeping alive in souls the memory of this liberator of our black brothers, this heroic martyr John Brown, who died for Christ and like Christ." When he received the first proofs of Paul Chenay's work in April 1860, he wrote in his diary that it was "very beautiful", and, in his letter of congratulations, that it was "a masterpiece". A WORK FIRST CENSORED BY THE EMPIRE. Paul Chenay's first printing of this print featured the date of John Brown's execution, December 2, 1859... which provoked a reaction from the censors, who saw it as a transparent allusion to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851: the engravings were seized and destroyed. A second print by Gilquin and Dupain was finally authorized, entitled only "John Brown", without the contentious date or subtitle, and distributed with a lithographed facsimile of a letter from Victor Hugo dated January 21, 1861, setting out his position on the case of John Brown: "[...] Let us put before the eyes of all, as a teaching, the gallows of Charlestown, the starting point of these grave events [the secession of several states breaking up the American Union]. My drawing, reproduced by your fine talent with striking fidelity, has no other value than this name, John Brown, a name that must be repeated unceasingly, to the Republicans of America, so that it brings them back to duty, to the slaves, so that it calls them to freedom. "The cost of this large-format engraving, however, was too high to allow the wide distribution Victor Hugo felt the importance of the cause required: he therefore had a photographic print made, which he offered separately for sale at a modest price, and which he placed as the frontispiece of a brochure entitled John Brown (Paris, Dentu, Dusacq, 1861). The whole was widely echoed, even in Haiti, a black country emancipated from French colonial tutelage. WHITE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVER MILITANT JOHN BROWN (1800-1859) was revolted by the condition of blacks in the United States from an early age, and preached the abolition of slavery. An enlightened Calvinist, realizing the powerlessness of words on the issue of slavery, and seeing himself as God's instrument, he threw himself into the violent struggle, gathering a group around him, ordering the assassination of slaveholders, and himself perpetrating, with several of his sons, a crime on a racist colonist in 1856. Wanted in several Union states, he was finally taken prisoner in 1859 while trying unsuccessfully to organize an armed slave uprising. At his trial in Charlestown, and in a series of letters written at the time, he put up an eloquent, well-constructed defense that impressed many. His personal case had a national impact, and, on the eve of the Civil War, highlighted the opposition to slavery between the northern and southern states of the Union. John Brown was convicted and hanged on December 2, 1859, and his death made him a hero and martyr for the anti-slavery cause: he f
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