Sending a photograph to a Russian compatriot. 1878

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)
Sending a photograph to a Russian compatriot. 1878
Autograph letter signed (‘Iv. Tourguéneff’) to [Marie Lynen], 50 rue de Douai, Paris, [postmarked 27 May 1878].

In French. One page, 170 x 106mm, on a bifolium. Envelope. Provenance: Drouot sale, 12 June 1984, lot 124 – with Librairie de l’Abbaye, catalogue 281 – Artcurial, Paris, 14 December 2010, lot 105.

[With] Carte-de-visite photograph signed (‘Iv. Tourguéneff’) and inscribed ‘à Madame Marie Lÿnen / Paris 1878’. The image by Legé & Bergeron, Paris, 90 x 53mm, mount 101 x 59mm. Inscribed in French on the image. Provenance: Sotheby's, 28 November 2007, lot 115 – Jerome Shochet Collection – Swann, 11 February 2010, lot 79.

Sending a photograph to a Russian compatriot. ‘I hasten to send you the photograph you wish for. – I only regret that it is not better: I have no others. / It is probable that in September I shall be back in Paris, that is to say in Bougival near Paris, where I live in a little chalet. – It goes without saying that I will be most happy to make the acquaintance of a compatriot who retains as faithfully as you do the memory of her country and of its language’.

Marie Lynen (1837-1929) was the Russian-born wife of the Antwerp merchant Victor Lynen (1834-1894): she had a widespread correspondence with writers and musicians including Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein and Liszt, who performed at her house. She and Turgenev exchanged at least two other letters over the following three years, but there is no evidence that they ever met. Photographs signed by Turgenev are rare at auction: ABPC and RBH record only five examples in the last 40 years. The letter and photograph had been separated for some decades before being reunited in the present collection.

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