The Head of Marcel Proust

by Fraser Brough and Raphael Egil, February–March 2025

Last quarter we presented the first exhibition at Sotheran’s Athenaeum, Raphael Egil: The Head of Marcel Proust, for which the Swiss painter created 12 portraits of Marcel Proust that bring the great rememberer of things past into the present day. What follows is a transcription of the correspondence between Fraser Brough (Director, Cassius&Co.), and Raphael Egil in the period leading up to the opening of the exhibition. At times prosaic, at times insightful, it tracks the birth of an idea.

Wednesday 12th February

F - Last night I had a terrible fever and had to go to bed early, but could not sleep. As I was rolling around I had a moment of lucidity, and an idea came to me that I want to discuss with you. Do you remember when we first began to talk all those years ago and you had just completed a painting, essentially a commission, for Reiner Speck [collector, bibliophile, and President of Marcel Proust Gesellschaft, Cologne], which was a portrait of Marcel Proust? I very much liked that painting. Can you remember how that painting came about?

R - I met Reiner Speck at a dinner, and then again two years later on the occasion of my exhibition in Cologne. The gallery had told him I was coming, and he arranged to meet with me to make a proposal of painting the head of Marcel Proust. His reason was that Proust is a good subject for an artist because he writes a lot about the nature of art, and because his work is all about memory, so it is a good challenge for a painter to try to bring his image into the present. At that time I had only read the first book of Recherche, and although it had been a long time ago, the influence it had in allowing me to open myself more and to live my passions was still present. I decided to complete the whole book, which took me one year, each day reading some more pages. I spent one year just with Proust. And then I got to work on the painting.

F - Would you consider taking up that challenge again? The idea that I had in the night was that you could make a series of paintings on this subject of Proust for the new space of Sotheran’s.

R - Hmm, I don’t know. In the end my task is to solve painterly problems and so the subject of my work is not soimportant.

F - If the subject is not important you might as well make it rhyme with the context of the exhibition. And I can give you some more good reasons: 1. you were the first artist I showed at CASSIUS&Co., so I would like you to be the first artist to show at Sotheran’s. 2. I can imagine this subject will be of great interest to the customers of a rare bookshop. Everyone likes Proust, and everyone wants to pretend they have read all of In Search of Lost Time. So 3., the paintings will sell.

R - I need to think about it again, I have a lot of distance between me and this subject now. It was a long time ago that I read the Recherche.

F - When you did that show Readers, there was a painting that looked like it was a portrait of Proust too. I used to tell people that the patch of yellow at the centre of it was a reference to the passage where Bergotte is dying, and he looks at Vermeer’s View of Delft, a painting he has seen a thousand times, and for the first time he notices a ‘little patch of yellow wall’, and he says that he wished he had lived his whole life like that little patch of yellow, and written his books in that way, as a kind of precious thing in and of itself.

R - It is funny that you should think this was a portrait of Proust. Because the person who sat for that painting, my friend Nils Nova, is the same person who sat for my painting of Proust that I did for Reiner Speck. He looks a bit like Proust.

Friday 14th February

R - Dear Fraser, I took your reference towards Vermeer from our last call as a starting point. Not only because of the idea of having an overwhelming love for a painting and then dying in front of it, but also because of Swann’s fascination that he changed later into his relationship with Odette. But in the end of my working process, Charlus became even more important than the girls on the beach. He even seems to be the most important person in the whole Recherche. He is the person that really lived what Proust was wishing for himself: Being a gay widower that is in a deep and transcendent love with his former wife.

* A PDF containing 16 paintings on paper is attached.

Saturday 15th February

F - I like what you are saying about Charlus. Do you know that Charlus the character is based on Robert de Montesquiou?

R - No I don’t know anything about these historical contexts.

F - Well he was an aristocrat and an aesthete, famous for his impeccable dress and his taste. He is an interesting figure to consider opposite Proust because his whole life is about surface and the exterior - the huge amount of attention he paid to external things, like his clothes, the objects in his apartment and his social life.

R - Proust is the opposite of that, he is living always inside himself, always an observer of society rather than a participant, he is always on the outside looking in, and documenting his impressions in his book.

F - And doesn’t the figure of Charlus end up as something like a shell of his former self? Like destitute and disgraced?

R - Yes, Proust wants to live like him but in the book he just makes him suffer.

F - There is also a famous painting of Montesquiou, I don’t remember who it’s by, but you can see something of the type of man I am talking about from this painting.

R - I will look it up.

F - Then your paintings of Proust disappearing into Charlus can have an image to go into, a second portrait.

Thursday 20th February

R - Dear Fraser, Some results were possible by not admiring Proust and Montesquiou. I don't want any distance. I go on working. All my best, Raphael

* A PDF containing 7 paintings is attached, the largest measuring 160 x 140 cm.

Friday 21st February

F - Dear Raphael, The yellow one on page 5 is the most successful so far in my view. Perhaps the large one at the end is also an interesting direction, although as you know I am not in love with this very thin application of paint. I am curious to know what you mean by distance in your last message - distance from what? All my best, Fraser

R - Dear Fraser, Perhaps that is the best one yet. But it is quite far from being a provocation. We will need this provocation if we are to install a new picture of Proust. A painting that has the potential to conquer is one that is rejected first. I meant distance from Marcel Proust as a person: what can I do for getting him present. I mean actively present in my studio. No time, no space. I stretched and primed some new canvases for next week. And send you 3 new small paintings (35cm x 30cm). All my best, Raphael

* Images of three small paintings are attached.

Saturday 22nd February

F - Dear Raphael, Marcel Proust is looking very fresh here. Likely it has to do with the palette, which is a palette for today more than a palette of Proust’s time. You must go on with this. It is true what you say about provocation, and it will be good if the paintings are conquering some new territory. However, I hope you won't be too cruel with this strategy - there is enough of that in the world at the moment and Proust doesn’t really deserve it. Looking forward to next week, Fraser

Tuesday 25th February

*Images of six small paintings sent by text

R - I go on trying. Serious and with joy.

Wednesday 26th February

F - I think you need to take a break from the studio and give yourself some distance from these paintings so you can freshen your eyes and go on.

R - Yes I need to come back to them and make some of them more complicated. Tomorrow I will have some time.

Thursday 27th February

R - Let me show you what I have been doing: I have been making them more complicated.

F - I like these better now.

R - I am more and more forgetting about Proust now and instead solving my painterly problems.

F - But you have also found some good solutions to the problems here. Can I say, that there is no shame in using the solutions to make more beautiful paintings - there doesn’t always need to be a fight or a problem.

R - Yes I agree, I will use some of my solutions on the larger canvases.

F - Good. An artist always has a choice when they make something, whether it’s a painting or a piece of music or whatever, a choice to make something which is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic, something that gives people a good feeling or a bad one. It is easier to be taken seriously if you make paintings that are more negative than positive. But I hope you will be generous with the secrets you are uncovering here and give us something optimistic. I think that is what Proust is talking about when he describes Bergotte and that yellow wall.

R - Yes I will; we have the same opinion on this. So many experts and art historians want always to look for the difficulties in paintings but a painting which is an expression of good happiness without problems is often the best one. An artist does not always need to bring his torture to the people.

F - Can we look through the paintings again?

R - Sure.

F - With some of these - maybe I shouldn’t say this but I will - you are doing something like Picasso no? I mean that in a good way. I remember you once said to me that a painter can not easily steal from Picasso because then your paintings will just look like Picassos, but here it feels like you are using his strategies without copying him.

R - Yes that is true, and it is happening well because it is happening naturally and not with an intent to steal. F - I hope me saying that won’t effect things and make you go too close to Picasso.

R - No don’t worry I was already aware of this connection.

F - I read somewhere an analysis of Proust that compares his way of writing with Picasso - when he is talking about the girls on the beach for example, he describes each small part in a fragmented way so that each part can stand in for the whole, like in a Cubist painting. So maybe it is good to make portraits of Proust that go a little in the direction of Picasso. Let’s look through them one more time.

R - I like this one very much.

F - Yes that is very happy and resolved. Proust is beginning to look like a flower, the flower on his lapel.

R - That is the case in all of these paintings. Here he is a vase full of flowers, here he is in a garden with a blue tree. And in pretty much all of them he is becoming a landscape, staying inside and becoming the outside at the same time.

Monday 3rd March

* Images of six new paintings sent by text, along with a photograph of the studio in which most of the paintings made so far are visible.

R - I am painting every night. It is such a good atmosphere at night in my studio. I should go on like this. Sending you some Proust portraits.

F - It is a good idea to paint this subject at night - ‘for a long time I went to bed early’ and all that... he went to bed to go inside himself no?

R - I didn’t remember that the Recherche begins with quite the same thing I am doing at the moment. It’s not the whole night I am working. I begin before 10 pm and do my paintings in the following 3 hours. This time of the day makes me feel quite different, I think, it’s a form of independence of whatever.

Wednesday 5th March

F - Can we look at the paintings again? You have changed so many of them.

R - Yes I added this section and made the face here more complicated. What do you think, does this one need to have a landscape painted in the lower half?

F - What do you mean a landscape?

R - The face here is a perfect moon and the lower section is a little bit empty, maybe I should add an area of the moonlight reflecting on some water down here?

F - His face is more like the colour of the sun, but you are right the atmosphere of the painting is the atmosphere of moonlight. There is both day and night in the painting… add the landscape if you want but please don’t fuck it up; it’s already a very good painting.

R - Ok I will think about it and go on with these.

F - We have enough paintings now for an exhibition, more than enough.

R - Yes it’s too many, it is important that we make a selection and keep some things behind. That way I can go on with this even after the show.

Monday 10th March

R - Yesterday Felicitas was here in my studio. You sold a big portrait of her that I painted, now it is hanging next to some beautiful Alice Neel. She was attracted a lot by my Proust heads and especially to the ones where she saw Proust longing for the goodnight kiss from his mother.

F- Which ones are those?

R - In this one the eyes are covered with the darkness so you see only the lips, and they could be the lips of either a man or a woman, waiting to be kissed or to kiss. And in these works the lips are isolated like a spotlight, and it has the atmosphere of the night.

F - Shall we make our final selection? R - Yes ok let’s go.

F - I think it should be these ones:

(* twelve paintings are selected).

What do you think? Would you be happy with that?

R - I think it is a good selection. When I think about the place I started, the sixteen paintings on paper, I can see all my first ideas here. Look at this, you see the eye, and here is the first spot of yellow.