Learn: Wikipedia entry for Gustave Flaubert
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.–”His spirit was torn between the need for reality and the simultaneous needs of a free, powerful, and fertile imagination” (Emile Faguet). The life history of the great novelist is quite simple. He was born at Rouen on December 12, i Sai, and spent his whole life on his estate of Croisset near Rouen, except for certain travels, including a journey to the East in 1849; at Croisset he died on May 8, i88o. The death mask was taken at Croisset by Flaubert’s family doctor, Dr. Fordn, and is in the Flaubert archives at Antibes (Madame Caroline Franklin Grout). We owe thanks for the photograph and for information about the mask to Flaubert’s well-known translator, Dr. E. W. Fischer of Berlin.
Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.