Félicien RopsFrench, 1833–1898Penumbra
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Not on view at present
Where is “Penumbra” now? Collection: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Cambridge, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Details
- Accession number
- M3021
In the catalog
Sources
- Harvard Art Museums
- Image: Harvard Art Museums — © President and Fellows of Harvard College
In the life of Félicien Rops
The whole life7 July 1833
Birth in Namur
The only child of the textile manufacturer Nicolas Rops and Sophie Maubile; the bourgeois family owes its comfortable fortune to textile manufacturing.
by 1853
Leaves law for the Académie de Saint-Luc
By 1853 Rops has left the university and is studying drawing from live models at the Académie de Saint-Luc, where he meets Louis Artan, Constantin Meunier and Charles de Groux and enters the local bohemian milieu.
1864
Meets Charles Baudelaire
Baudelaire makes an enormous impression on Rops and a friendship develops: the poet visits the family at Thozée Castle many times and they travel together at least once; Rops creates frontispieces for Baudelaire’s “Les Épaves” and for a selection of poems from “Les Fleurs du mal” that were censored in France and therefore published in Belgium.
early 1870s
A marriage in crisis
Long months in Paris away from his wife and his poorly concealed affairs take their toll on the marriage: Charlotte writes that his latest affair is the eighth since they met and married, and ends her letter with a word of pardon. The mistress in question, Alice Renaud, will be murdered a few years later by her jealous husband, and Rops is drawn into the scandal when his intimate love letters to her are read out at the trial.
by 1875
Final estrangement from his wife
By 1875 Félicien and Charlotte are permanently estranged — although they never divorce — and Paris remains Rops’s home for the rest of his life.
23 August 1898
Death in Corbeil-Essonnes
Rops dies at home — La Demi-Lune, the house he bought on the Seine, where in later years he bred new varieties of roses — with Aurélie and Léontine Duluc, his daughter Claire and close friends at his side; his son Paul, told of the imminent death, travels from Belgium but arrives too late. He is buried in Essonnes.
