Bal Travesti chez le Baron Lycklama, Villa Escarras, Cannes, 1874.
The host, the wealthy Orientalist, Tinco Martinus Lycklama à Nijeholt, stands right of center, his hand on his hip.
Fête de nuit aux Tuileries, le 10 juin 1867, 1867. This soirée occurred during the Exposition Universelle in Paris that year.
The Empress Eugénie is on the arm of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia while, behind, Napoléon III is engaged in conversation with King Wilhelm I of Prussia.
The baptism of the future King Carlos I of Portugal, 1863.
The infant was baptised with the names Carlos Fernando Luís Maria Víctor Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis José Simão.
King Karl XV & IV of Sweden and Norway, Queen Lovisa, and their daughter Princess Lovisa, the future consort of Frederik VIII of Denmark 1862.
An engraving of the French Emperor Napoléon III is on the wall behind them, and what looks to be a painting of the first Napoléon over the mantle.
Above Princess Lovisa is a portrait of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, the stepson of Napoléon I and King Karl's maternal grandfather.
More than four years ago I posted an extensive visual resumé and biographical sketch of the notorious Italian countess. Her monomaniacal fantasies, abetted by the photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson, are celebrated for their theatrical excess - eventually tinged with desperation - and have made her a legend in the history of early photography. But in her own time, she was celebrated for her beauty - with long, wavy golden hair, a delicately pale complexion, and eyes that seemed to change color from green to blue-violet - and known for her liaison with the Emperor of France.
The count and countess with their son, Giorgio.
But before that, she was a seventeen year old girl, a member of the minor Tuscan nobility, married off to Count Francesco Verasis di Castiglione, a man twelve years her senior. The following year, the eighteen year old countess had her only child, a son, Giorgio. Next year, the couple traveled to Paris, where the countess was under instructions from her cousin, Camillo, Count Cavour, to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoléon III - by whatever means. So, at nineteen, she became the Emperor's mistress. The year after that, her marriage in shambles, her scandalous affair with Napoléon at an end, she left Paris for Italy and a self-imposed exile. She was just twenty.
She returned to Paris four years later where, separated from her husband, she reestablished herself in Parisian
society, forming numerous liaisons with notable aristocrats, financiers,
and politicians. And it was after her return to Paris that began in earnest her obsessive photographic chronicling of her own image, the theatrical posturing and dress-up that would be her legacy.
The painter Sébastien-Charles Giraud created several paintings for princesse Mathilde Bonaparte depicting interiors of her hôtel particulier at 24 rue de Courcelles in Paris. Since demolished (1954), the hôtel had been put at her disposal in 1852 (Or 1857, depending on the source) by her cousin - and former fiancé - the Prince-Président, or perhaps-by-then Emperor Napoléon III, and it soon became one of the most celebrated salons of the nineteenth century.
Le Salon de la princesse Mathilde, 1859.
La Salle à manger de la princesse Mathilde, circa 1854.
La Princesse Mathilde dans son atelier, circa 1860.
La Véranda de la princesse Mathilde, circa 1864.
Un Coin d'atelier de la princesse Mathilde, circa 1853.
The dating on these images, and even whether they all record spaces at 24 rue de Courcelles, is problematic. Different sources give different
dates for her residence there. Much complicating the issue, she apparently lived at another address on the same street, 10 rue de Courcelles -
which I believe is still standing - prior to moving to number 24. When she first lived in the neighborhood and when she moved from the first
to the second address, and at whose instigation - Nieuwerkerke's or the Emperor's - is unclear. If the dates attached to the paintings are at all
accurate, one or two of them may actually depict interiors from number 10.
***
Portrait by Édouard Louis Dubufe, 1861.
Mathilde Laetitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte, Princess of France, Princess of San Donato (27 May 1820, Trieste - 2 January 1904, Paris), daughter of Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Princess Catherine of Wurtemberg, and therefore the Emperor Napoléon's niece. She spent the first years of her childhood in Rome and nearly married her cousin Louis Napoléon, the future Napoléon III, in 1836, but the betrothal was broken as a result of the failure of the Strasbourg coup and his imprisonment at Ham. In 1840 she married the Russian nobleman Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato, but he refused to part with his mistress and, after a very stormy marriage, the couple separated; in 1846, with her own lover, comte Émilien de Nieuwerkerke, she settled in Paris. She went on to establish a soon to be legendary salon; "This salon is the true salon of the nineteenth century, with a mistress of the house who is the perfect model of the modern woman", wrote the brothers Goncourt, her frequent guests. Indeed, she gathered at 24 rue de Courcelles all those who mattered from the intellectual and artistic elite of the Second Empire. She organized dinners for men of letters on Wednesdays, when writers such as
Sainte-Beuve, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Alexandre Dumas, and François Coppée would be entertained. She also invited journalists like Émile de Girardin and Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder of Le Figaro, while scholars and scientists, such as Pasteur and Berthelot were also part of her circle. The artists were received at dinner on Friday, Édouard Detaille,
Eugène Isabey, Baudry, Bouguereau, Meissonier, Doré, Carpeaux, and Fromentin among the guests. In 1854, she acquired the château de Saint-Gratien, on the shores of Lake Enghien, where she lived for six months a year. There she replicated the literary and artistic circle of the rue de Courcelles. The war of 1870 and the fall of the Empire forced her to flee France and take refuge in Belgium; her hôtel was sequestered. Returning to France in 1871, she moved to the rue de Berry and resumed her pre-war receptions with the same eclecticism as in the past. Now frequenting her table were, among others, Paul Bourget, Anatole France, Maurice Barrès, Proust, and the actress Réjane. Following the death of Demidoff in 1870, she married the artist and poet Claudius Marcel Popelin, but outlived him. Her salon flourished to the end, and long before her death at the age of eighty-three, she had more than earned the sincere nickname "Notre-Dame des Arts."
***
Intérieur du cabinet du comte Émilien de Nieuwerkerke, Directeur général des Musées impériaux, au Louvre, 1859.
In spite of his rather unusual relationship with the Emperor's cousin, princesse Mathilde - both were married to other people - the comte de Nieuwerkerke played a highly important rôle during the Second Empire, acting as a kind of minister of cultural affairs, energetic and powerful. Giraud also depicted the comte's office on the first floor of the north
wing of the Louvre's Cour Carrée. The artist has incorporated into the decoration of the room a number
of precious objects that are in the collection of the museum.
Copies of Winterhalter's state portraits of the Emperor and Empress hang between the windows.
***
Sébastien-Charles Giraud Paris -Sannois), French painter. Beginning in 1835, he studied at theÉcole supérieure des beaux-arts, with a focus on genre painting. In the 1840s, he traveled to America and then, in 1846, with a military expedition ordered by King Louis Philippe, he went to Tahiti. While there he made numerous sketches of the island - the vegetation, the people, and their dwellings. On his return to France he was given the nickname "Giraud le Tahitien".
I found this group of images somewhere on the internet; I've long since forgotten where. Their clothing is datable to the 1850s and, possibly, the 1860s, so if they are indeed individuals attached to the family of the duc d'Aumale, it seems that these photographs would have to have been taken in England, as that is where the family had resided since the overthrow of the duc's father, Louis-Philippe, in 1848. When I found them, the images were attributed to Pierre-Louis Pierson. But I can't find any reference to the French photographer working in England during this period. And by the mid-1850s he was busy taking the portraits of members of the succeeding régime in France, that of Napoléon III, and had embarked on his forty year collaboration with the infamous comtesse de Castiglione.
Though I'm not at all convinced of the information that labeled the images of these otherwise unidentified figures, I think these photographs are very interesting - both for the sharp-focus, detailed illustration of the fashion of the day, and for the precise and particular characterization of their subjects - and certainly still worth sharing... whoever the people are, whoever it was who took their portraits.
The UNTOLD GAZE is a large format fine art book - 11x11 inches hardbound, 160 pages, full color - a collection of almost ninety of Stephen's paintings paired with short fiction and poetry inspired by his work. Included among the thirty-three authors are Lidia Yuknavitch, Tom Spanbauer, Monica Drake, Sam Roxas-Chua, and Whitney Otto. Click on the image above if you'd like more information on how to purchase the book.
Stephen O’Donnell is a mid-career fine artist, writer, and singer/performer. His paintings are widely collected, both in this country and abroad. Entirely self-taught, he is best known for his self-portraits, paintings which typically employ gender ambiguity and a lot of droll humor. His work most often exemplifies what is known as a portrait historié, in which a recognizable subject is portrayed in period costume or mythological guise, to dramatic or comic effect. He is also known for his small paintings of animals. His work – both literary and visual – has appeared in the literary magazines/journals Nailed, Menacing Hedge, and Gertrude. He is married to writer and graphic designer Gigi Little, with whom he sometimes performs. Their book, The Untold Gaze – a collection of Stephen’s paintings paired with short fiction by 33 authors – was published in October of 2018. They live in Portland, Oregon with their dog Nicholas.
