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ALS in pencil, two pages, 5 x 8, Giverny par Vernon letterhead, September 1, 1920. Handwritten letter in French from Claude Monet to writer Lucien Descaves (translated): “Thank you for sending me a copy of Paris Magazine and the beautiful article that you have written about me in it. You have put my modesty under a cruel strain and I am still asking myself if I really deserve such praise, although coming from you, they are very precious to me. Anyway, I thank you very much and I ask you to always trust my good friendship.” Monet adds a postscript: “My best to Madame Descaves with the hope that you have good news about your son.” In fine condition.
Monet wrote this letter just one week after Descaves's article, 'Chez Claude Monet,' appeared in Paris-Magazine on August 25, 1920. This letter is dated to the same month Monet reached an agreement with Paul Léon, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, formalizing his donation of twelve Water Lilies panels to the French state, with Léon undertaking to exhibit them according to Monet's own instructions. The arrangement was the product of nearly two years of negotiation, dating back to Monet's initial offer to Clemenceau the day after the Armistice in November 1918, and would not be finalized by notarized deed until April 1922. By September 1920, then, Monet was in the midst of settling what became his best-known legacy to France, working at Giverny even as his eyesight was already compromised by the cataracts that would trouble him for the rest of his life.
The letter's recipient, Lucien Descaves, was a prominent French novelist, playwright, and founding member of the Académie Goncourt, first known for his antimilitarist novel Sous-Offs (1889), which was prosecuted by the war ministry and defended in print by Zola and other leading writers of the day. By 1920 he was a senior figure in French letters, consistent with Monet's expression of modesty at being profiled by him.
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