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Misunderstood Symbolism: Rereading The Subjective Objects Of Robert De Montesquiou’S First Maison D’Un Artiste, Elizabeth Emery

Department of World Languages and Cultures Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This essay seeks to return Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac to his rightful place as an important but misunderstood innovator whose aesthetic experimentation of the 1880s exerted a profound influence on those who would come to be known as ‘Symbolists’. I juxtapose Montesquiou's written descriptions of his interior decorations at an apartment at 41, Quai d’Orsay in Paris with the little-discussed photographs he had taken of this residence, probably in 1887 or 1888, in order to illuminate the originality of his vision.