[p. 11] [ms: Mr. Feodor Pitcairn, The Singing Angel, Pastel], 47 x 35 1/2 [in.].
"[…] Malgré ma Maladie de cette hiver/ j’ai beaucoup travailler. Mais la vie de/ Paris me fatigue beaucoup. Ma santé/ n’ai [est] pas encore ce que j’était auparavant/ enfin pourvu que je peut rendre mes rêves/ et de temps a autres aller vers cette divines forêts quelles beauté! […] ici il y a eu de grand changement. nous/ avee [avons] transformé la grand[e] pièce/ pour avoir plus de place pour les tableaus. […] J’ai un grand pastel [...] et un autre un Ange avec le magnificat qui ce déplis chantant/ sous une fênetre ou l’on voit un/ paysage avec des arbres en fleurs avec/ un arc-en-ciel. ce paysage est souvenir/ de la vallée de chevreuse. [...]" [sic] (... Despite my illness this winter I have worked a lot. But life in Paris greatly exhausts me. My health is not as good as it was before. Well as long as I can achieve my dreams and go from time to time to this divine forest, what beauty. … Big changes were made here. We have transformed the large room to have more space for the paintings. … I have a large pastel: ... And another one: a singing angel unfolding the Magnificat under a window, through which one can see the countryside with flowering trees and a rainbow. This countryside is a remembrance of the Vallée de Chevreuse [Chevreuse Valley]. ...) (Philippe Smit 1922)
The subject of this painting is based on the poem Sainte (1865) by Stéphane Mallarmé, of which the artist faithfully transposed verses of the first two stanzas in this pastel.1 These lines correspond both to his love of music and to his Swedenborgian vision of the angel.
At the window concealing
the old sandalwood; its gilt slowly flaking away
of her viola sparkling
as of old with flute or mandore,
Is the pale saint, spreading out
the old book that unfolds;
of the Magnificat streaming
as of old according to vesper and compline:
At this glazing of monstrance
Which brushes the harp of the Angel
Formed with its flight of the evening;
For the delicate phalanx
Of the finger that, without the old sandalwood
Nor the old book, she holds balanced
On the instrumental plumage,
Musician of silence.
1. Stéphane Mallarmé, Dix poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, Lille: F. Giard; Genève: E. Droz, 1948, p. 36.