Eugène Bataille

Eugène François Bonaventure Bataille (7 May 1853, Le Mans, Sarthe – 20 June 1891, Clermont, Oise), better known by his artistic name Arthur Sapeck,^[2][3][4] was an important figure in the intellectual movements of the emerging French Third Republic, an emblematic figure of Les Hydropathes,^[5] then the Fumistes, Hirsutes, and Incohérents movements.

Eugène Bataille
Caricature by Cabriol (1880)
Born	(1853-05-07)7 May 1853 Le Mans, Sarthe
Died	20 June 1891(1891-06-20) (aged 38) Clermont, Oise
Nationality	French
Occupation(s)	Lawyer, illustrator, caricaturist, musician, ventriloquist

Contested photographic portrait^[a]

A lawyer by training and profession, he demonstrated, according to Michel Dansel, a certain talent that manifested itself, notably, through his gifts as a musician, caricaturist, and illustrator, but also as a ventriloquist.^[6] His hoaxes and mystifications made him more famous than his work as an illustrator (such as that for Le Rire by Coquelin cadet).^[b] From 1881 to 1883, he published with Jules Jouy L'Anti-concierge, a satirical review in defence of tenants and criticism of janitors, to which Alphonse Allais contributed.^[c]

For the Arts Incohérents exhibition in 1883, he created Mona Lisa Smoking a Pipe, which directly prefigures L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp in 1919.^[d]

Having become a prefectural councillor in the Oise in 1883,^[12] he married in 1888 and quickly had two children but suffered from psychiatric disorders that led to his internment in the asylum of Clermont, Oise, in 1889, where he died on 20 June 1891.

Gallery

• 
  Illustration of the work by Coquelin cadet, Le Rire, 2nd ed., 1887
• 
  Illustration of the work by Coquelin cadet, Le Rire, 2nd ed., 1897
• 
  Advertisement in Gil Blas on 8 February 1883

Notes

1. Luc Ferry in L'Invention de la vie de Bohème (Le Cercle d'art, Paris, 2012, p. 101) affirms that it is indeed a portrait of "the illustrious Sapeck". However, the photograph's caption specifies "Eugène Bataille (Opéra)". It could therefore be the homonymous lyric artist.^[1]
2. In the explanations he gave in 1897 on his anti-Masonic mystification, Léo Taxil revealed that he chose the pseudonym Bataille in homage to Sapeck (who collaborated with him several times as an illustrator^[7]): "It was supposedly to better mark the character of attack, the war on Palladism. But the true reason for me, the intimate reason of the fumiste dilettante, was this: one of my former friends, now deceased, was an outstanding fumiste: it is the illustrious Sapeck, prince of fumisterie in the Latin Quarter; I was reviving him in a way, without anyone noticing. Sapeck, in fact, was called by his real name: Bataille."^[8] In Les trois cocus (1884), Taxil evokes Sapeck's pranks, "a scoundrel who is the scourge of the Latin Quarter".^[9]
3. Alphonse Allais signed in L'Hydropathe on 15 March 1880 a vibrant dithyramb to Sapeck.^[10]
4. The American historian Dennis Cate notes that Duchamp "grew artistically" by reading Le Chat Noir and Le Rire.^[11]