COCTEAU (Jean). - Lot 72

COCTEAU (Jean). Born in Maisons-Laffitte. 1889-1963. Poet, playwright and film-maker. L.A.S. "Jean" to "Ma chère Margaret" [Margaret Brusset]. S.l., October 20, 1956. 3 pp. in-4. Envelope. Joint : - PREPARATORY LEAD DRAWING BY COCTEAU depicting a frieze of geometric motifs with a face in profile, for the decoration of the chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer. (dim.: 350 x 240 mm) (some marginal tears, folding). Beautiful and moving letter from Jean Cocteau to the wife of painter Jean-Paul Brusset, following the dispute between the two painters over the frescoes in the chapel of Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer: ...For an unimportant line in a canard (...) your husband forgot that I was grateful to each person for his kindness and courage, that without him I could do nothing. He forgot my preface, more important, I think, than an article. Poor Brusset doesn't think that if I quoted Triquenot it was only because he introduced her to me, and that Triquenot made it clear to me that he was a painter and only worked with me by exception. As for the odious sentence about "the chapel doing it all by itself", this proves, alas, that Brusset understood nothing (and understands nothing of a very beautiful and moving sentence), I said that his help and the ceramist he discovered to be were so many miracles dictated by the chapel which gives us its orders. Sil sees everything through the small eye of the spyglass, so it's best he leaves and lets me down. It won't be my first disappointment of the heart (alas)... He adds a long postscript, a real cry from the heart: ...I have to tell you the truth that nobody in the world can believe. I'm poor. I've always been robbed, especially at the movies. Without Francine [his friend and patron Francine Weisweiller] I couldn't live on the coast for 15 days. I was only able to pay for your stay because of her kindness. In 1955, the painter Jean-Paul Brusset (1909-1985) settled on the Côte d'Azur with his second wife, the American Margaret Tatum. Some time earlier, he and Aimé Maeght had inaugurated the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul de Vence. Brusset works with ceramics in Vallauris. In 1956, he reunited with Jean Cocteau on the Côte d'Azur, who asked him to collaborate on the graphic work for the frescoes in the Saint-Pierre chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer and the wedding hall at Menton town hall. Jean Triquenot supervised the frescoes at the chapel in Cocteau's absence.