WIERTZ, ANTOINE. (1806-1865). Belgian artist and writer. ALS. (“Wiertz”). Headed by an ink sketch entitled, “Monsieur the Cook,” depicting a chef toiling over a steaming stove with a lyre floating above him in a misty cloud. 1½pp. 8vo. N.p., N.d. To Mr. Damery, editor of the “Gazette de France,” France’s first weekly magazine whose origins date to 1631. In French with translation.

The kitchen also has its poetry and – what is incontestable – that poetry is the most generally appreciated. Racine for many people has neither savor nor sauce, and if one is to believe our most celebrated cooks, the art of making good soup is the foremost art.

Woe to the man then who loses the useful faculty of appreciating the work of the cook. Alas, such is my frightful situation at this moment; my palate is without taste and without energy and, like the amateur… before the statue of Apollo Belvedere, I cannot judge the style, the beauty, the perfection of a leg of chicken.

That is not my only fault, and since you are an artist I am venturing to trust you here as you trust me. You are rigged up in the classic apron and cap of the cook; good, that is a whim. Here is mine: constantly crouched by the fireplace, warming my hands which I scorch, I daub the paper with white, with black with whimsical and useless sketches; but the folly of this passion is the strange idea of living in complete solitude; society frightens me, and if a friend who is not very well acquainted with me wants to drag me from my corner by the fire, I pretend to be ill. Such, dear Painter, Poet and Cook, is the abominable humor which afflicts me and which doubtless ought to disgust a fashionable man of the world.

For you, my colleague, who are acquainted with the follies to which the children of Parnassus are subject, I am venturing to hope for your indulgence. Pardon if I resist the charms of your soup, and allow me to read some of your verses; that is a pleasure I can enjoy without leaving the corner of my fireplace. Dearest neighbor, to your health…”

Influenced in his early training by the work of Peter Paul Rubens and Michaelangelo, Wiertz found mixed success as an artist. After winning the 1828 Prix de Rome of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Wiertz lived in Paris, studying the art of the Louvre. In 1832, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which provided him with three years of study in Rome, and where Neoclassical influences can be found in his large oil The Greeks and the Trojans Fighting over the Body of Patroclus. Returning to Belgium, Wiertz continued to paint in his own particular, sometimes macabre style– such as Premature Burial and the still life Allegory with Skull – and other times painting monumental works, some of which prefigured Belgian Symbolism. Facing an often mixed critical reaction to his works, he received state support and helped turn his studio, where he lived as a recluse, into a museum. Some of his best-known works include the Two Girls (La Belle Rosine), depicting a young woman facing a skeleton, and the sculpture The Triumph of Light, a copy of which stood for many years on San Francisco’s Mount Olympus.

Our letter likens poetry to cooking and reflects Wiertz’s “favorite theory that there is a correspondence between all art. The relation between painting and music was a subject of extensive speculation with him, and he believed that some universal law applicable to the expression of beauty (whether to the eye by form and color, or to the ear by sound) existed, which, if discovered, would establish a perfect philosophy of all art,” (ibid.).

Written on the recto and verso of a slightly age-toned, single folded sheet. The address leaf is separate but present; in very good condition. Letters by Wiertz are rare.