The Countess Combing Her Hair (Esmérée) or Dancing Music (Esmérée)

Plate 8 of 8 from the series 'Les Cantilènes', the title of a group of poems by Jean Moréas. This plate illustrates the lines in Moréas' poem 'La comptesse se peigne (Esmérée)' in the chapter 'Airs et Récits'. The poem tells of a girl from Klephte, Turkery. Her silken hair, mature eyes and 'burnished silver breasts' relecting the sun were admired by a young man, portrayed by Bernard on the right of the composition : 'C'est la belle aux yeux, C'est la belle aux yeux de mûre, C'est la belle aux yeux de mûre; La belle aux cheveux, La belle aux cheveux de mûre, Aux cheveux soyeux'. In the following poem 'Le Ruffian', Moréan describes a handsome, well-dressed cavalier who was admired by the woman he met: 'Ainsi, beau comme un dieu, brave comme sa dague'.
In 1891–92 Bernard worked on a series of hand-colored zincographs (planographic prints for which a zinc plate instead of a lithographic stone is used as a matrix) intended as illustrations for 'Les Cantilènes', a collection of forty lyrical poems in the medieval manner by the Symbolist author Jean Moréas, first published in 1886.
In 'Livre d'Art' during it's first year of publication (Numbers 2-3, May-July to August 15, 1892) the following announcement appeared:
“On demande des souscripteurs pour un supplement exceptionnel du Livre d’Art se composant de 8 lithographies d’ E. Bernard destinées à illustrer Les Cantilènes de Jean Moréas…il sera tire 25 exemplaires numérotés et signés de l’auteur, du format du Livre d’Art sur papier Japon (365x270)"
The fully bound supplements promised in 1892 were never pulished by 'Livre d'Art'. The titles given to the works in the Morane catalogue raisonné are those that Bernard gave to the plates during the Jacques Doucet sale twenty years later.