Aesthetic Satires Gallery2-Un Impromptu de Chopin

Un Impromptu de Chopin

George du Maurier
“Un Impromptu de Chopin”
Trilby, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1895, page 331 

George du Maurier’s novel Trilby was published, with his own illustrations, in 1894. It was inspired in part by his experiences as an art student in Paris in 1856–57, where he was a friend of the American James McNeill Whistler and the Frenchman Henri Fantin-Latour. The central character, Svengali, is a musician and a hypnotist whose mysterious personality stands for the strange power of music and art. The beautiful but tone-deaf Trilby, an Irish servant-girl, is able, when hypnotized by Svengali, to sing with unnatural beauty and brilliance. 

YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, RARE BOOKS COLLECTION 

PR4634 .T7 1895