“The Mysterious Sketch” (original: “L’esquisse mystérieuse”) was written by “Erckmann-Chatrian” and first appeared in Histoires Et Contes Fantastiques (1849). Émile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890) were French journalists who became famous in their lifetime and are still best-known for their accounts, fictional and non-fictional, of life in the French countryside.

Christian Vénius is a poor artist eking out a living on the streets of Nuremberg as an artist. He had gone there to study the German masters but had been forced to paint portraits, and from there descended to sketches, and then to silhouettes, the most demeaning of jobs for an artist. He is disregarded by society and by his brutish landlord, who continually bothers Christian for the rent. Such talk enervates Christian, and he is left feeling despondent and ready to commit suicide, if only to spite his landlord. One night after midnight Christian wakes up and draws “a rough sketch in the Dutch style–something strange, extravagant, and such as was altogether different from my ordinary subjects.”¹ It is a scene of a courtyard, with hooks and pools of blood all about; it is a butchery. And as Christian continues to sketch, his inspiration leads him to draw a foot, which is joined by a leg, and then by an entire person, an old woman whose throat has just been cut. The sketch is of a murder scene–the old woman’s murder. The following morning a rich amateur, Baron Van Spreckdal, appears in Christian’s lodgings. The Baron is also a judge of the criminal court. His initial business seems to be to request a portrait, but he is mesmerized by the sketch and buys it from Christian. Soon the police arrive and take Christian away to jail. He is questioned closely about the sketch but proclaims his innocence, so he is taken to the real-life setting of his sketch, where the corpse of the old woman lies. Christian is astounded, and no one believes that he had nothing to do with the murder. The next day, in jail, Christian is looking sadly out the window of his cell at the market near the jail when he sees a butcher walking by, and Christian suddenly knows that the butcher is responsible for the old woman’s murder. Christian quickly sketches the murder scene on the wall of his cell, now with the murderer in the sketch, and calls for the judges. They arrive, and he tells them who committed the murder. The butcher is sent for, and when he sees the sketch he gives a roar and tries to escape. He confesses, finally, and Christian moves on with his life, still ignorant about what just happened.

“The Mysterious Sketch” is an enjoyable minor horror story. What sets it apart from other such stories is the way in which Erckmann and Chatrian match the painter’s point of view with a vivid set of images. “The Mysterious Sketch” is a visual story, which works to its advantage.

The most notable thing about “The Mysterious Sketch” is the way in which Christian acts as a kind of psychic Occult Detective. 1849, the year of the story’s publication, is early for a “psychic detective” story, not just because the first occult detective story, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Desolate House” (original: “Das öde Haus”),² was only published in 1817 and did not seem to inspire imitations, but also because Poe’s last C. Auguste Dupin Mystery—usually acknowledged to have inspired the detective fiction genre, though this is a gross overstatement—was only published in 1844, five years before “The Mysterious Sketch.” 1849 is early not just for an occult detective story but for any kind of detective story.

But, of course, “The Desolate House” was written by E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose fame had not dimmed in Europe by the late 1840s and whose fiction was a marked influence on the stories of Erckmann-Chatrian and who the French pair did not hesitate to associate themselves with. “The Mysterious Sketch” is in retrospect a Hoffmannesque story, lacking the air of strangeness which Hoffmann brought to his best fiction but otherwise quite similar to his work. Christian even has the clairvoyant ability of Doktor K, the protagonist of “The Desolate House.”

¹ Erckmann-Chatrian, “The Mysterious Sketch,” in C.J.T., ed., Terrible Tales, French (Paris: Brentano, 1891), 3.

² Tim Prasil, “The Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives,” Brom Bones Books, accessed Nov. 13, 2018, https://brombonesbooks.com/occult-detectives-ghost-hunters-in-fact-and-fiction/the-chronological-bibliography-of-early-occult-detectives/.