Abstract: This article studies the way in which the figure of the “painters’ friend” is constructed in Carco’s Souvenirs, in a century which witnessed the friendship between writers and artists existing as a living source of a significant share of literary output. It gives us the opportunity to understand how the perpetuated valorizing of temperament and “families of spirits” marks the gap between the great artists and the criticism of the poets whose ethos no longer fits as directly into the framework of a psychology of artists.
