Raphael Egil

The Head of Marcel Proust

Opening Thursday 10th April 2025 at Sotheran’s Athenaeum

CLICK HERE to request a preview of the exhibition catalogue

CASSIUS&Co. is pleased to announce its first exhibition at Sotheran’s Athenaeum, Raphael Egil: The Head of Marcel Proust, opening on Thursday 10th April. The exhibition coincides with the official public opening of the rare book dealer’s new space at 22 Charing Cross Road.

Raphael Egil was the first artist to present an exhibition at CASSIUS&Co., and his work continues to sit at the soul and centre of the gallery’s activities. It is fitting then that a presentation of his new work should mark the beginning of our program at Sotheran’s.

In 2020, when our correspondence began, Egil had just completed an extraordinary painting, a portrait of Marcel Proust, which had been a commission for the collector, bibliophile and President of the Marcel Proust Gesellschaft, Dr. Reiner Speck. Proust is an interesting subject for a painter, because he writes extensively about the nature of art and because his work is often analysed in relation to painting, but also because he writes so much about memory, which is now all he himself exists as, so there is a painterly challenge in making a new image of him in the present.

Created in a frenzy of activity in the early months of this year, the body of work presented here is the result of an artistic engagement with Proust that succeeds in being both deep and distant, erudite in its relationship to the writer and his work while remaining painterly as a primary concern. In lieu of a traditional catalogue text, a transcript of the correspondence between the artist and the gallery as they conceived the project will be published alongside the exhibition.

Raphael Egil: The Head of Marcel Proust will open at Sotheran’s Athenaeum, 22 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0HS, on Thursday 10th April, with drinks from 6 - 8 pm. The exhibition runs concurrently with Ian Hamilton Finlay: The Printed Works, at CASSIUS&Co., 63 Kinnerton Street, London, SW1X 8ED.