ABSTRACT
Le Peintre à l'étude is a little book which Francis Ponge published in 1948, with a picture by Georges Braque on the front cover, showing a butterfly. Ponge's starting-point is one that would have had no place in Whistler's aesthetics. In Apollinaire's poetry as in Fautrier's painting, Ponge sees a quality which, obliquely, with a single word - 'concert', 'harmonie' - he relates to musicality. Ponge is certainly more conscious of the history, complexity and roots of the concept of harmony in art than Apollinaire, Braque, Whistler or Satie. Ponge discusses the historical impact of the play and the ideology which it promoted. While Ponge contemplates Music as an intemporal absolute, he is unable, at the same time, to consider sounding music, real music. Rameau, as Ponge knew, was not only a composer; he was also a theorist of music.
