QUETELET. Album d'Ernest Quetelet. Lot n° 204

Album of Ernest Quetelet. S.d. [1830s-1840s?] 21 x 17,5 cm, n.p., [57] ff. entirely handwritten and drawn in ink, laid paper with Hennessy - Pro Patria watermark. Bound, half vellum, cardboard boards, smooth spine. The spine has been covered with the same paper as the boards. Album entirely designed by the eminent Belgian scientist Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874) for his son Ernest Adolphe Quetelet (1825-1878). The title page is in Ernest's name, but we think we can attribute it to Adolphe, especially because the handwriting matches the specimens we have been able to consult. Known as the founder of the Royal Observatory of Brussels, renowned for important works in astronomy and statistics, biographers and direct witnesses unanimously point to the humanistic erudition and artistic talents of the mathematician, who was primarily destined for a career in literature. He was briefly a poet (Société de littérature de Bruxelles, Société des Douze), a pupil of the painter Joseph de Cauwer, one of his youthful works being awarded a prize and exhibited at the Ghent Salon, and he never stopped drawing. He made the salons of the Observatory a meeting place for intellectuals and artists of international renown. But it is certainly through his 'Zwanzeur' spirit (he was notably a member of the Agathopèdes), that this strange, fanciful, fantastic and burlesque album is offered to his son. Quetelet is in full control of his art in this album of ink drawings, remarkable for its inventiveness and its powerful expressiveness. Some compositions are in the vein of the illustrations of the Romantic period, sometimes in the manner of press drawings (the effect is reinforced for some by the addition of titles or fragments of dialogues), but as the pages go by, he gives more and more free rein to his imagination, in a style that sometimes evokes Odilon Redon: grotesque, deformed, zoomorphic characters appear, of a metaphysical monstrosity, and the titles are posed as enigmas. Very good condition inside, binding faded with weakened seams. Curious and rare.