Artur (Arthur) Barbosa – ‘In Reception’
£1,000.00
1 in stock
Signed Barbosa in pencil (upper right). Pencil, watercolour, and gouache, highlighted with white and gum arabic on paper. This picture is an alternative design for the book; “The Memoirs of Coral Pearl, the erotic reminiscences of a flamboyant 19th-century courtesan,” 1983.
Image: 11 7/8 x 9 5/8 in. (30 x 24.5 cm.)
Mount: 17 1/2 x 15 in. (44.5 x 38 cm.)
Description
The picture is illustrated on page 339 in the book “Barbosa – The Man Who Drew Flashman” by Lawrence Blackmore. Published by The Book Palace Ltd, 2017. Condition: Cleaned and mounted using acid-free museum grade board (no frame). The books mentioned are not included in the sale.
‘In Reception’ illustrates the grand hall of a fine building while the mistress of the house ‘dressed in black’ introduces a young girl to a rather sinister and untrustworthy looking gentleman.
Lawrence Blackmore points out that the first publication in 1886 of ‘Mèmoires de Cora Pearl’ was greatly anticipated but proved a dull disappointment. The names of the key players were only thinly disguised and the accounts of her sexual exploits and frivolities only tamely recounted. It quickly went out of print and disappeared. In 1983 Granada published ‘The Memoirs of Cora Pearl’ edited by William Blatchford. Barbosa designed the dust jacket. Blatchford claimed to have located a later volume of Cora Pearl’s memoirs, published in 1890 after her death that was decidedly more frank and sexually explicit than its predecessor. These ‘discovered’ memoirs proved to be a hoax, the real author being Derek Parker, a former Chairman of the Society of Authors and well known for his books on astrology, co-authored with his wife.
