Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly et les arts visuels peut sembler un sujet de thèse paradoxal, tant il est convenu de considérer Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly comme incompétent dans le domaine artistique. Catholique, à la fois romancier, diariste, épistolier et critique d’art éphémère, il demeure l’un des auteurs les plus inclassables du XIXe siècle. Si le critique d’art est généralement contesté, nous proposons ici un jugement plus nuancé. Nous montrons combien l’esthétique de son écriture profane et catholique renvoie à des évocations qui sont de véritables transpositions d’œuvres d’art, où sculpture et peinture rivalisent. Quelques couleurs spécifiques sont en effet récurrentes au point de faire l’objet d’une évidente déclinaison liturgique. Au plan matériel, son goût pour la couleur est démontré par ses manuscrits. Barbey révèle au monde une écriture picturale, mais aussi une personnalité source d’inspiration et de représentation pour de nombreux artistes. Nous nous attachons également à la réception du personnage, afin de montrer comment le dandy spectaculaire, devient lui-même œuvre d’art pour ses contemporains et un sujet d’artefacts, dont les sculpteurs Zacharie Astruc et Auguste Rodin s’emparent en lui façonnant chacun un buste de bronze. Nous montrons enfin combien Barbey est une source d’inspiration pour divers artistes, allant des illustrateurs par images fixes, jusqu’aux adaptateurs, réalisateurs cinéastes et téléastes. / Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly and the visual arts could be a paradoxical thesis because Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly is considered as incompetent in the artistic domain. Catholic, novelist, diarist, letter writer, and controversial art critic, he is regarded as one of the most unclassifiable authors of the XIXth century. He is one of the last romantics, but also one of the precursors of symbolism. His suggestive writing stimulates the reader’s imagination. If the art critic is controversial, yet the judgment must be qualified. His profane and religious esthetic way of writing suggests a real transposition of master works of arts, rivaling painting and sculpture. Some specific colours keep recurring so that they become the object of an obvious liturgical declension. Graphically, his taste for colour is demonstrated by his manuscripts. Barbey reveals to the world a pictorial way of writing, but also his personality is a source of inspiration and representation for numerous artists. In this thesis, the reader becomes attracted by the reception of his character, a Spectacular Dandy, who becomes a work of art himself for his contemporaries: the sculptors Zacharie Astruc and Auguste Rodin made bronze busts of him. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly inspires the whole field of the visual arts, from illustrators of his published books, up to adapters, directors, film-makers and television directors.

Gabriel Astruc (1864-1938), a French impresario of Jewish background, is mostly known for his collaborative work as an impresario with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. His role within Parisian musical culture at the fin de siècle, however, was much broader. He was a critic, creator of a leading periodical, producer of musical and circus events, music publisher, and associate of many important cultural figures of his day. Although Astruc has been mentioned in scholarly literature, his multifaceted activities have never been carefully studied. Following the revisionist initiatives of previous scholars (e.g., Pasler, Huebner, Garafola, Fauser), this project offers a new understanding of Parisian cultural life between 1880 and 1913. Rather than focusing on valued composers such as Debussy or selected avant-garde repertoire, this dissertation considers the panoramic perspective of the Parisian cultural milieu as understood by a well-positioned impresario who participated in diverse, but often intersecting, music circles. It reveals rich interconnections between Astruc’s entrepreneurial, managerial, and publishing endeavors that linked private fêtes and soirées that he produced in elite homes with his ambitious concert series, La Grande Saison de Paris, 1905-1913 – organized through his firm La Sociéte Musicale – and with compositions and contents published in Musica, the magazine he co-founded in 1902. It questions Astruc’s aesthetic preferences and argues that he helped to shape Parisian culture through the promotion, publication, and programming of balanced, eclectic repertoire of new and old, national and international, and light as well as weighty works. This study also chronicles the development of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Astruc’s culminating project that was intended to embrace symphonic, operatic, and chamber performance and to experiment with new juxtapositions and integrations of the arts. Research for this dissertation centered on a compilation and a comparative analysis of wide-ranging materials found in Astruc’s collections at the Archives Nationales and New York Public Library. Unlike earlier studies of fin-de-siècle Paris, this project utilizes previously unexamined publications, musical criticism, published literature, and manuscript material, all originating from or related to Astruc’s diverse activities and observations.