Victor HUGO (Besançon, 1802 - Paris, 1885) VIVEZ : the banquet MOUREZ : the tomb Brush and ink wash on three pine boards. Signed and dated lower left on one: "Victor Hugo 185. Both set in a fir frame. 28,4 x 82,5 cm Provenance: - Probably given by Victor Hugo to his son Charles Hugo (1826-1871). - Charles Hugo Collection (1826-1871) Brussels (?). - Collection Georges Hugo (1826-1925) Paris, collection Jean Hugo (1894-1984), collection Lunel. - Hugo sale, Christie's, Paris, April 4, 2012, no. 180, reproduced. Bibliography: Bernadette Grynberg and Jean Massin, Victor Hugo, Œuvre graphique, vol. II, t. XVIII, no. 823 and no. 824 [M II 823 M II 824] in Victor Hugo, Œuvres complètes, chronological edition published under the direction of Jean Massin, Paris, Club Français du livre, 1967-1971 [OCM]*. Victor Hugo rarely used wood as a support for his drawings. We know of another drawn wooden lath, preserved in the Victor Hugo Museum in Paris (op. cit. M II 859), which decorated, in the form of a trumeau, the dining room of Hauteville Fairy, Juliette Drouet's house in Guernsey. Victor Hugo divided his time in Guernsey between his house at Hauteville House with his wife and children, and next to it the house of his mistress, Hauteville Fairy. Our drawings, whose date is half erased "185.", were certainly made at the same time. Victor Hugo surprises us again, with this metaphysical question, "Vivez-Mourez", that he entrusts to his character of Goulatromba "A lord from whom never a swearword fell And my friend of heart names Goulatromba" (Ruy Blas, act IV, scene 5). Above all, he is a trickster, a drunkard and a womanizer, who burns life at both ends. On our drawings Goulatromba is alone in the cemetery in front of a decaying tomb, then alone at the banquet, as if he had to continue to live in spite of death. Is it better to survive than to leave before the other? Perhaps we can see in this an allusion to the premature loss of his daughter, a loss from which Victor Hugo never recovered? His metaphysical incantations are reminiscent of the injunctions that Gauguin drew and carved in wood as in Tahiti on the lintels of his house "Maison du Jouir": "Be in love and you will be happy" "Be mysterious".