I am recently studying a rare collection of illustrated letters by French Impressionist painter Edouard Manet. As I peruse each illustration, my heart is overflowed with unspeakable joy and tender emotions. The circumstances surrounding these letters remind me so much of our connections to our dear Yong Joon. I’d like to invite you to join me to stroll down a romantic journey of "Charismatic Yong Joon", complemented by Manet’s sensuous illustrative writings.
Manet had a genuine admiration for refinement and elegance, an aspect of his personality that was evident in his tasteful attire, his mannerism, courtliness and wit. He had many female acquaintances who admired him, and he reciprocated their affection by writing beautiful letters to them. The text is generally brief touching on topics about fashion, art, social life and relationships (dear Camille, is it legible?), but the enhancements with water-coloured flowers transcend an air of warmth and sincerity. Among the flowers adorned the letters are garden and briar roses, carnations, periwinkles, of particular beauty is its lightness and the way it meshes with the writings. These letters brought tremendous pleasure and tender feelings to their female recipients and constitute some of the most lyrical pages of nineteenth century artistic sensibility.
I cannot resist drawing a parallel comparison between Manet and his female admirers to our dear Yong Joon with us. Throughout all these years, numerous messages were extended to our prince in forms of articles, artworks, music, videos of varying styles and themes - be it sentimental, romantic, powerful or humorous, all subconsciously desiring responses from our prince. Occasionally we received pictures of him revealing himself in the most alluring and demure fashion – we gratefully accepted this as our precious reward from him. Dear sisters, I herein attempt to complement these two sensual subjects – Yong Joon and Manet’s illustrative writings. Let us imagine the way our prince answers to each and every one of us!
Our handsome prince charming is smiling to his family,
he is thinking about the precious times we spent together …..
he is dreaming about the good times when we meet again …..
he desires to paint out his beautiful sensuous thoughts,
and contemplates to compose a poetic passage to serenade us!
I have selected 15 beautiful illustrations from Manet’s collection to share with you. If you like these artworks, I hope to post them in various groupings in the future as I attempt to match (at a snail pace) thousands of Yong Joon’s pictures to complement the mood of each painting (and vice versa). Hope you enjoy this first of the Manet series!
Acknowledgements :
1. Thanks to bb for the abundance choice of pictures.
2. Thanks to liezle for the suggestion of links to the pictures.
3. Manet The Still-Life Paintings, George Mauner, The American Federation of Arts. 2000
4. Impressionism Art, Leisure & Parisian Society, Robert L. Herbert, Yale University Press, New Haven & London. 1988
5. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, James N. Wood, The Art Institute of Chicago. 2000
6. Impressionism, Belinda Thomson and Michael Howard, Bison Books Corp. 1988
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