Émile-Antoine BOURDELLE. 2 L.A.S., one with drawing, Paris, 1919-1920, to his "dear Master" Anatole France. Anatole France; 4 pages in-4. About the creation of a bust of Anatole France. December 18, 1919. "The elements I have been able to take from your face and from your human bust are still [...] only a study. I'm currently studying a head with few shoulders" (drawing). He will create a "bust of the two Anatole France, his body clothed in his teaching. The physical A France clothed in the draperies of the philosopher with the coat so fine, so subtle and so harmoniously ordered that the A France maître des lettres Françaises has woven for himself"... January 15, 1920. "To this sort of sculptor-architect that I am, you have not held back. My compasses posed their three-dimensional problem on you. And you underwent the morose inquisition of the workman who had to give the work the fourth dimension, the inner one. The portrait sculptor isolates himself, yet he must listen and respond to his model, especially when the model is you, Master. Learning and reconstructing a face from you was the same labor as a stonecutter who, amazed to discover the cradle of rock where an admirable spring flows, would like to reconstruct its virtue and total plan in a new stone. [...] Master builder, you recognized that you were looking at a sincere workman. Forgive me for having been so tenacious and so severe on myself. I worked very hard to discover a little of this joy of truth, which is the kind of joy that can be built and sometimes last. My mind was burning my compass"... He praises his "dear Master": "to all your work one can say that you confer, so much in you grace and precision are total, that you give to all your work a style of eternity"...