 |
| Anonymous Italian artist Salon in a Florentine Palace 1824 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| L. Lely Salon in Palazzo Satriano, Naples 1829 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Jules-Frédéric Bouchet Small Salon, Montpensier Wing, Palais-Royal 1831 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
"But the point at which my pain became unendurable was when he said: "To begin where my last telegram left you, after passing a sort of shed, I entered the house and at the end of a long passage was shewn into a drawing-room." At these words, shed, passage, drawing-room, and before he had even finished uttering them, my heart was shattered more swiftly than by an electric current, for the force which girdles the earth many times in a second, is not electricity, but pain. How I repeated to myself, renewing the shock as I chose, these words, shed, passage, drawing-room, after Saint-Loup had left me! In a shed one girl can lie down with another. And in that drawing-room who could tell what Albertine used to do when her aunt was not there? What was this? Had I then imagined the house in which she was living as incapable of possessing either a shed or a drawing room? No, I had not imagined it at all, except as a vague place. I had suffered originally at the geographical identification of the place in which Albertine was. When I had learned that, instead of being in two or three possible places, she was in Touraine, those words uttered by her porter had marked in my heart as upon a map the place in which I must at length suffer. But once I had grown accustomed to the idea that she was in Touraine, I had not seen the house. Never had there occurred to my imagination this appalling idea of a drawing room, a shed, a passage, which seemed to be facing me in the retina of Saint-Loup's eyes, who had seen them, these rooms in which Albertine came and went, was living her life, these rooms in particular and not an infinity of possible rooms which had cancelled one another. With the words shed, passage, drawing-room, I became aware of my folly in having left Albertine for a week in this cursed place, the existence (instead of the mere possibility) of which had just been revealed to me. Alas! when Saint-Loup told me also that in this drawing-room he had heard someone singing at the top of her voice in an adjoining room and that it was Albertine who was singing, I realised with despair that, rid of me at last, she was happy!"
– Marcel Proust, from Remembrance of Things Past, volume 6, published posthumously in French as La Fugitive and also as Albertine disparue, translated into English as The Sweet Cheat Gone, also as Albertine Gone and as The Fugitive. The passage above is from the translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, first published in 1930.
 |
| Jules-Frédéric Bouchet Large Salon, Montpensier Wing, Palais-Royal 1831 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Vladislav Dmochowski Salon 1840 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Otto Wagner Salon in the House of the Duke of Leuchtenberg 1850 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Eduard Gaertner Chinese Salon in the Royal Palace, Berlin 1850 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Dominique Hagen Salon, Moscow 1851 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Rudolf von Alt Japanese Salon at Villa Hügel-Hietzing, Vienna 1855 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| S. Redkovsky Salon 1858 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Anonymous French artist Second Empire Salon ca. 1850-60 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Rudolf von Alt Salon in the Apartment of Count Lanckoronski, Vienna ca, 1869 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Franz Alt Salon in Vienna 1872 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
 |
| Anonymous English artist Salon Elevation, Buscot Park 1890 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |