Christmas Card 2013

It's time for this year's Christmas card "reveal".  G and I didn't share responsibility for the image this go 'round; with a show coming up, I didn't feel I had time for the necessary back and forth negotiating it normally takes to put our card together.  So I did all the Photoshopping and she did all the printing and assembly.

My starting point was the paired state portraits of the Empress Eugénie and Napoléon III by Winterhalter - nice Christmas-y color scheme if nothing else.

There are many, many versions of these two portraits; they're all copies.  The originals are
presumed to have been destroyed when the Tuileries Palace was burnt in 1871.

Rather than the usual oil painting, I believe this image is of one of the tapestry copies of the empress'
portrait; the general tone is brighter in color, and some of the details are more generalized.

Already, the two were nicely oriented toward each other, and the lighting came from the same direction.  It was fun to blend the join between the two backgrounds - draperies, trees and palace - and make it look like it was all one big painting.  I had to do away with the crowns - Nicholas needed to be the master here, not either of us - and then I needed to establish a centrally-located draped table and cushion.  I copied and warped elements from the existing tables and took much of the cushion itself from another Winterhalter painting, the Garter portrait of Queen Victoria.  (Which I recently posted about here.)

There was much fussing: a lot of color adjustment (the red in the emperor's portrait was much less so than in the empress'), subtracting details and then camouflaging the subtraction, copying and adjusting details, then moving them to a different location.  When all that was done, it had gone from this:

To this:

Then to add our faces.  You may not be surprised that G's face went on the boy body, and mine went on the girl's; that's just how we do things around here.

We were pretty easy to do, but Nicholas was a little harder.  Because of the lighting, the table and cushion where he was sitting was quite shadowed, so I had to "shadow" his lower half, as well, but making it seem that light might reach the upper part.  Also, in the original photograph, his right ear had light shining through it and glowed bright red; it just looked wrong.  Blending elements from his left ear and adjusting the color and lighting, I "constructed" a better right ear.

Then he needed some princely ornament.  Because of his tiny head and his big ears, I couldn't get any sort of proper crown on him.  At first, I thought I might just go with a jeweled collar: this being a pearl and diamond bracelet - French, of the same period as the portraits, actually - that I Photoshopped in:

I still like this version much better.  (I also had to lose some of the background details;
they were visually distracting once Nicholas was added to the image.)

But I agreed with G that, scaled down to the actual card size, this would just look like he was wearing a regular collar.  So I eventually settled on adding an emerald brooch (which had belonged to Catherine the Great) to his collar, and topping his little head with the Duchesse d'Angoulême's - much warped - emerald and diamond tiara, once part of the French crown jewels.  I did a lot of work on these two last items, but I still don't think they hold up as well in close-up as other parts of the finished image.  From a distance, though, they add the desired "princely ornament" and a bit more Christmas-cognisant green.

If Nicholas is distressed at having to wear "girl jewelry", he's been too diplomatic to mention it.

Paca, Duchess of Alba by Winterhalter, 1854

In the collection of the dukes of Alba, Palacio Liria, Madrid.

María Francisca de Sales "Paca" de Portocarrero Palafox y Kirkpatrick, 12th Duchess of Peñaranda, etc. (January 29, 1825, Málaga - September 16, 1860, Carabanchel), the beloved elder sister of the Empress Eugénie, married Jacobo Luis Francisco Pablo Rafael Fitz-James Stuart y Ventimiglia, 15th Duke of Alba, etc. (June 3, 1821, Palermo - July 10, 1881, Madrid), on February 14, 1844 in Madrid.  She died of a undiagnosable spinal ailment at the age of thirty-five, leaving three young children.

 ***

I first saw a black and white reproduction of this painting back when I was a teenager and in the midst of my mania for her sister, the empress.  I've had to wait this long to find an image in color; I think it was worth the wait - and, incidentally, gorgeous.

Les Diamants de la couronne de France

In 1887, in an effort to prove that they'd finally accomplished what their great revolution of 102 years previous had failed pitifully to do - make France not a monarchy - the French government decided to sell off their crown jewels.  The last occupant of a French throne, Napoléon III, had been booted in 1871, and much of the truly impressive horde of jewelry had been created for his wife, the Empress Eugénie.  Existing jewels from the state treasury were often used in these commissions, and so these new pieces were considered state property rather than personal.  The empress had fled Paris at the Empire's fall with pretty much just the clothes on her back and, though the French government eventually returned much of her personal property - her Winterhalter paintings for example - they felt justified in withholding the sparkly things.

The cover and some illustrations from the catalogue of photographic plates by the photographer Berthaud - Diamants, Perles et Pierreries provenant de la Collection dite des Joyaux de la Couronne. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1887:

The sale was heavily promoted and much commented on in the press.  In the end, it appears that - somehow - the sale didn't manage to be terribly profitable.

A vintage photograph of a display of the diamond jewelry.

A vintage photograph of a display of the ruby and diamond jewelry.

In much the same way that, having sold off the contents of Versailles and other royal palaces during the French Revolution, the current republic continues to frantically - and at great cost - buy back whatever pieces of royal provenance it can get its hands on, they have also reacquired several of the long lost crown jewels.  Most of the "resurrected" reside today in the galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre.

The emerald tiara made by royal jewelers Evrard and Frédéric Bapst in 1819 for the duchesse d'Angoulême - Marie Thérèse
Charlotte de France, only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette - it was acquired by the Louvre in 2002.

The tiara in its case in the Louvre.

Pair of ruby bracelets that also belonged to the duchesse d'Angoulême; created by Paul-Nicolas Menière
and Evrard Bapst in 1816 and part of a large parure.  They were donated to the Louvre in 1973.

Emerald necklace and earrings made by Nitot et fils for the Empress Marie Louise, second wife
of Napoléon I.  Originally part of a large parure, they were bought by the Louvre in 2004.

A remarkable survival:  the tasseled diamond bow-knot brooch of the Empress Eugénie.  Made by François Kramer in 1855,
altered in 1864, it spent more than a century in the collection of the Astor family, and was purchased by the Louvre in 2008.

The pearl and diamond diadem of the Empress Eugénie, made by Gabriel Lemonnier, circa 1853 - well-known from the state
portrait by Winterhalter - and resold soon after the auction, in 1890, to Albert, prince von Thurn und Taxis.  It remained
in the family for over one hundred years, until it was bought at auction by the société des amis du Louvre in 1992.

The state portrait of the Empress Eugénie, after Winterhalter.  (The original
painting is presumed destroyed in the burning of the Tuileries palace in 1871.)

The marquise de Las Marismas - two portraits by Winterhalter

Painted by Winterhalter in 1857.

Claire-Émilie, marquise de Las Marismas, vicomtesse Aguado, née MacDonell. (October 24, 1817, Algiers - April 23, 1905, Paris).

When I first started composing this post, I could find nothing on this lovely woman other than her name and the dates of her birth and death.  And then, depending on where I read it, even the date of her death and the spelling of her maiden name varied.  As I struggled on, I began getting bits and pieces, mostly from French and Spanish sources, and much of it contradictory; I was made to resort to photographs of tomb inscriptions.  What started as a desire to have a little something with which to footnote two lovely paintings became a minor, but far too time-consuming, detective case.

Apparently, the future marquise de Las Marismas was born October 24, 1817 at Algiers, the eldest daughter of Hugh MacDonell, who was British consul-general there, and his second wife, daughter of Admiral Ulrich, the Danish consul-general. She married, ca. 1842, Alexandre (Manuel-Alexandre?  Jean-Manuel?  Alexandre-Jean-Manuel?) (August 6, 1813 - August 16, 1861, Paris), the eldest son of the wealthy Franco-Spanish Aguado family.  The couple had four children, the first son dying in childhood.  At some point her husband "lost his reason", as they used to say, and she tended to him until his early death.  Two years later, in 1863, by "special dispensation", she married his younger brother Onésipe-Gonsalve-Jean-Alexandre-Olympe, vicomte Aguado (August 9, 1830, Seine et Oise - May 19, 1893, Paris).  She died April 23, 1885 - or 1905 - or 1908, depending on who you believe; the inscription on her tomb would seem to say 1885 - having outlived a husband, daughter, and two sons.  (Or two husbands, a daughter, and all her sons, if either of the later dates is correct.)

(Update: Thanks to the excellent research done at the Père Lachaise cemetery by commenter "Veuillet Rebecca" - see below - we are now certain that the marquise actually died in 1905 at the age of eighty-seven. A good age, but how sad to have gone before all of her children....)

What is certain is that she was a dame du palais to the Empress Eugénie - it seems the Aguado family were old friends of the empress' family, and likewise a supporter of the first Napoleon - and she was included in Winterhalter's famous 1855 portrait of the empress surrounded by her ladies.

While I have known of that vast canvas since childhood, the two oval portraits of the marquise, also by Winterhalter, are fairly recent acquaintances of mine.  She seems, especially in the one where she is in white, the quintessence of the soft, pale mid-nineteenth-century beauty, with her "English curls" and her dreamy eyes.

This portrait is exhibited at the chateau de Compiègne in the same
room as the group portrait of the Empress and her ladies.

Painted by Winterhalter in 1852 - I love the little loose strand of hair on the right.

 The marquise is shown, seated, on the right of the group portrait of 1855.

***

In 1860, the marquise's daughter, Carmen-Ida-Marie Aguado y MacDonell, born in 1847, was also painted by Winterhalter.  In 1866 she married Adalbert de Talleyrand-Perigord (1837-1915), and became duchesse de Montmorency.  She died in 1880 at the age of 33.

Personnes royales, en privées....

Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, at the Château de Neuilly

The Empress Eugénie in her study at the Tuileries by Giuseppe Castiglione

"Le Cabinet de travail du roi Louis-Philippe à Neuilly", 1845 by James Roberts

A gray day in the north of France

I haven't blogged in a very long time.  The delay was made even longer as, on the last day of April, I fell while out walking.  The various, though still relatively minor, injuries I sustained made it impossible to do much of anything for the entirety of May; no going to work and no painting, much less writing blog posts.  Only two days ago was I able to sit down and begin to paint again.

This is a post I began more than a year ago.  I don't know why I never finished it.  I really shouldn't be posting it today, on this lovely early summer day; it best belongs to a dark and wet autumn afternoon.  But I wanted to put something out, today, to get started things again.  And here I am.

***

On a rainy, blustery, dark gray day in November of 1994, I took the train north from Paris to Compiègne. On arrival, and without any further study of my map, I found my way through the wet streets and quite directly to the chateau, the wind knocking me this way and that and blowing out my umbrella.

I had come mainly to see the Musée du Second Empire. The chateau has several different museums allotted to its immense expanse, and is probably best known for a few elegant rooms designed and decorated for Marie Antoinette and for the rich and beautifully preserved décor installed by Napoléon I. But I most wanted to see the large collection of memorabilia from the reign of his nephew, the Emperor Napoléon III. Of particular interest were all things relating to my childhood idol, his wife, the Empress Eugénie. Especially, the famous Winterhalter group portrait of 1855: l'Impératrice Eugénie entourée de ses dames d'honneur.

The small and rather dingy ticket office was dark and almost empty of visitors. Even the few palace employees stood about, looking like they were waiting for something to happen. My French was non-existent at the time and, unexpectedly for such a large, important museum, no one spoke English. Too far from Paris and foreign tourists, I expect. Eventually I was made to understand that the guide would do only one tour, and we - the small group of visitors - had to vote which part of the huge building we would see. The vote went for the Grands Appartements. I was very disappointed, of course, but tagged along with the group, peering at all the vast, beautiful rooms, the gray autumn light dulling more than a little of their glamour. It didn't matter to me that the tour was all narrated in French - I knew most of what I saw, having seen it all in books - but the tour guide kept looking over at me. She seemed to be disconcerted, somehow, that I was there, thinking I didn't know what it was that I was seeing.  Perhaps she felt sorry for me or maybe I just made her nervous.

After we wound our way back to the starting point, the few other visitors quickly dispersed.  Not knowing what to do, stubborn in my desire to see what I'd come all that way to see, I just stood there, waiting.  I can't recall how it came about but, somehow - maybe they thought there was no other way to get rid of me - a good-looking, middle-aged woman appeared and, a little grudgingly, made me to understand that she'd show me what I'd come for.  It appeared she spoke little or no English.

She was the perfect example of the well-off Frenchwoman of a certain age:  trim, perfectly fitting dark shoes and slacks; pastel twin set; a patterned silk scarf artfully arranged about her shoulders and held by a simple gold brooch; discrete pearl earrings.  She had a petite, well-proportioned figure and ash-blond hair, simply but flawlessly arranged.  She was perhaps fifty.

As we made our way to the other side of the chateau, we were at first accompanied by a guard but, soon enough, it was just the two of us walking through a long string of rooms. This part of the palace appears to be much refurbished now, colorful and well-arranged.  But at that time, almost twenty years ago, the aspect of those rooms was that of something carefully preserved but abandoned.  One wondered if, even in the tourist-y summer, these rooms were much visited.  Many if not most of the high, paneled walls were painted the infamous gris Trianon - the misnamed "Trianon gray" that one used to see in so many unrestored palace rooms - and made all the more austere by the cold November light coming in through the tall windows. 

All the doors were locked, and my guide held a large ring heavy with old keys, long and attenuated.  At each set of gray-painted, immensely tall (perhaps fifteen feet?) paired doors, we'd pause while she searched for the right key.  Eventually the correct key would turn narrowly in the old lock and she would let us through into the next room, before leaving which, the doors would be locked behind us.

At each new room, she would begin - in French - to give a vague overview of the objects before us.  And I would smile and continue her descriptions - in English - because I knew exactly what I was seeing.  We continued this fragmentary shared monologue as we passed from room to room, pausing before paintings and display cases, locking and unlocking those great, tall pairs of doors.  And she seemed less and less annoyed to be leading a silly hulk of an American through this still, forgotten pool of French history.  And she really looked at me now, and something warmed and softened in her eyes as she realized how much I knew, and how precious it all was to me.  How I honored it all.

Truthfully, in most of the rooms the displays were not terribly impressive.  The expected rather vulgar Second Empire furniture, dull paintings and drily academic sculpture.  And then, in smaller rooms, large and tall glass cases full of heaped arrangements of books and bits of lace, tinted lithographs and desk ornaments, baby shoes and green silk parasols.  All together, it had about it a feeling very like an old arrangement of dried and faded flowers.

It wasn't until we arrived at the last few rooms that I saw the Winterhalter portraits that had most drawn me to the place.  They have several more in the collection now, but at that time, I believe they only had four, perhaps five.  I recall the wonderfully backlit oval portrait of the comtesse de Morny, née Princess Trubetskaya, wife of the emperor's illegitimate half-brother; the small, rather wooden portrait of the Empress Eugénie that was apparently done for her son, the Prince Imperial; an oval portrait of the ringletted marquise de las Marismas, dame du palais to the empress, that I'd never seen reproduced before; the oval portrait of the emperor that is a pendant to the famous chapeau de paille portrait of his wife (this unsigned painting has been attributed to Winterhalter, but I will never believe it was by his hand); and finally, of course, the vast, leafy painting of the empress with her ladies.  This last work, in its grand frame, took the space of a whole wall to hang, and the paint looked as bright and fresh as if it had just been finished.  I'd dreamed about this painting since my childhood, and it was thrilling to see it.

 

When we'd finished, she did me the courtesy of walking me outside, and we stood under the colonnade that forms a screen between the two projecting wings at the front of the chateau.  With limited shared language we said our thank yous and goodbyes.  It was all very sweet until I made the extremely gauche gesture of trying to tip her; I really thought I was supposed to.  She looked offended and we ended our meeting on that awkward note.

But in remembering that day, I don't dwell on that embarrassing moment.  And I don't think very much about the poor, mummified remains of the everyday life of an idolized empress.  I honestly don't even linger long over those gorgeous paintings I loved, and still love, so much.  When I think of that cold, rainy day spent in a palace in the north of France, I think about a long, thin key tuning in an old lock, and my eyes scanning up and up to the top edge of a tall gray-painted door as it gently opens from its frame.  And I think about the warming look there in the eyes of a proper Frenchwoman - a total stranger - who, more than anyone in the world, right at that moment, comprehends who I am.

***

I stumbled across this video recently. It so reminded me of that day at Compiègne. The lighting is much different and the palace has been much refurbished; the rooms we walked through were dark, gray and cluttered. But the brief shot (at approx. two minutes) of the hand clutching a large bunch of old keys, turning one long, slender key in the lock of a gray-painted door, brings it all back to me.