In 1952 Bécat was commissioned by Éditions Arc-en-Ciel to produce 72 plates for a six-volume limited edition of the selected works of the celebrated eighteenth century playwright and novelist Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688–1763), commonly referred to simply as Marivaux. Even though Marivaux’s works are about the romance of love rather than its more erotic aspects, Bécat still managed to include enough naked flesh and décolletage to please the edition’s intended clientele.
Marivaux is considered one of the most important French playwrights of the period, writing more than forty comedies for the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne of Paris. His most important works are Le triomphe de l’amour (The Triumph of Love), Le jeu de l’amour et du hazard (The Game of Love and Chance), and Les fausses confidences (The False Confidences). He also published a number of essays, and two important but unfinished novels, La vie de Marianne (The Life of Marianne) and Le paysan parvenu (The Successful Peasant).
Marivaux is said to have written his first play, Le père prudent et equitable (The Prudent and Fair Father), when he was only eighteen, but it was not published until 1712, when he was twenty-four. However, the young Marivaux concentrated more on writing novels than plays. After 1715 Marivaux’s literary efforts entered a new phase. His friendship with Antoine Houdar de la Motte introduced him to the Mercure, the chief newspaper of France, and he started writing articles for it in 1717. His work was noted for its keen observation and literary skill, showing the first signs of what is now called marivaudage, the flirtatious bantering tone characteristic of his dialogues. In 1742 he became acquainted with the then-unknown Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The early 1720s were very important for Marivaux. In 1721 he married a Mlle Martin, but she died shortly thereafter, and he lost all of his inheritance money when he invested it in the Mississippi scheme. His pen now became his sole resource, and fortunately he had connections with two fashionable theatres – his Annibal (Hannibal) had played at the Comédie Française, and his Arlequin poli par l’amour (Harlequin’s Love Lesson) at the Comédie Italienne. For the next twenty years the theatre, especially the Comédie Italienne, was Marivaux’s chief support.
In 1731 Marivaux published the first two parts of his great novel, La vie de Marianne. The eleven parts appeared at intervals over the next eleven years, but the novel was never finished. Marivaux was elected a member of the Académie française in 1742.
The Arc-en-Ciel edition of Marivaux contains fourteen of his best-known plays and the novel Marianne.
Volume I
La surprise de l’amour (The Agreeable Surprise) (1722)
Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard (The Game of Love and Chance) (1730)
L’école des mères (The School of Mothers) (1732)
Volume II
La double inconstance (Infidelities) (1723)
La seconde surprise de l’amour (Love’s Second Surprise) (1727)
Volume III
Les serments indiscrets (Careless Vows) (1732)
L’épreuve (The Test) (1740)
La dispute (A Matter of Dispute) (1744)
Volume IV
Les fausses confidences (The False Confidences) (1737)
Le legs (The Legacy) (1736)
Les sincères (The Sincere Ones) (1739)
Volume V
Arlequin poli par l’amour (Harlequin’s Love Lesson) (1720)
Le préjugé vaincu (Prejudice Overcome) (1746)
L’heureux stratagème (Successful Strategies) (1733)
Volume VI
La vie de Marianne (The Life of Marianne)
In the novel the passengers of a carriage heading for Bordeaux are attacked and killed by thieves, but a three-year-old girl is spared and taken in by the priest of a neighbouring village and his sister, who names her Marianne. Twelve years later Marianne accompanies her adoptive mother to Paris, but her mother dies suddenly, and Marianne is taken in by M. de Climal, who courts her, a courtship that Marianne resists because she has fallen in love with a Climal’s handsome nephew Valville. The Life of Marianne begins as an adventure story but continues as a fictional autobiography, told by a woman (who ends up as a countess) in a series of letters she writes to a friend.
The Bécat-illustrated Marivaux was published by Éditions Arc-en-Ciel in a numbered and boxed edition of 2,200 copies.
