L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e ~ D o s t o ï e v s k i

L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e  ~  D o s t o ï e v s k i



Sunday, August 23, 2026

Dressing for the academy - a selection of academic studies

 
Henri Bonnerot, circa 1910.
Attributed to Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Hesse, circa 1830-50.
French School, nineteenth century.
French School, nineteenth century. (Undecipherable signature....)
Thomas Stothard, circa 1800.
Peder Severin Krøyer, 1877.
Bosser - "student of Bonnat," circa 1900.
 Unknown, circa mid-nineteenth century.
 Unknown, circa nineteenth-early twentieth century.
French School, nineteenth century.
Attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme, nineteenth century.
Three studies for his sculpture L'Amour taillant son arc dans la massue d'Hercule, by Edmé Bouchardon, circa 1750.
French School, nineteenth century.
Pauline Auzou, 1793-94.
Constant Louis Antoine Lorichon, 1824.
Walerian Kryciński, 1877.
Jean-Jacques Bachelier, eighteenth century.
Vicke Andrén, circa late nineteenth century.
Halil Pasha, 1881.
Claude Chailly, 1782.
Paul-Joseph Barian, circa 1896.
Herbert Arnould Olivier, 1882.
Attributed to Gustave Courbet, circa early 1840s.
Joaquim Vitorino Ribeiro, 1879.
 Adolphe Valette, circa early twentieth century.
David Wood, circa 1910-12.
French School, nineteenth century.
Romer Kitching, circa 2015-18.
Cornelis Joseph d'Heur, circa mid-eighteenth century.
Pietro Aldi, circa 1875.
Edmé Bouchardon, 1755.
Kenyon Cox, circa 1874-76.
Kurt Kühn, 1902.
Carl Kjellin, 1881.
William Etty, circa 1830s.



Sunday, August 16, 2026

On the eve of departure - Labille-Guiard’s portrait of the marquise de La Valette, circa 1786-7

 

Adapted from Christie's' lot essay:

Labille-Guiard’s portrait depicts the elegant young marquise de La Valette playing a harp. Marie-Thérèse-Odile née Flahaut de La Billarderie (1761 - 29 November 1788), known as Odile, was twenty-five or twenty-six years old when she sat to the artist. She was born into a minor French noble family originating in Picardy and notable for its tradition of military service dating back to the sixteenth century; her father was a military officer with strong familial ties to those connected with the French court. In 1780, at the age of nineteen, she married Jean-Baptiste de La Valette (1746 - 20 February 1788), the marquis de La Valette and marquis de Pérodon. The couple had two children: Jean-Louis-Achille de La Valette-Pérodon (1781 - 1811) and Marie-Louise-Caroline-Auguste de La Valette (1783 - 1836). Her husband inherited vast sugar plantations and other considerable lands in the French colony of Saint-Domingue - present-day Haiti - and in 1786 - after entrusting their two young children to the care of her parents at the Château de Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, the family’s ancestral estate - the couple left France for Saint-Domingue to oversee their interests on the island. Their stay in the Caribbean proved brief and tragic. Having sold some of their island properties, their fortune was stolen when the ship carrying them was pirated in the harbor of Port-au-Prince. Her husband died as a result of the attack, likely murdered. Pregnant with the couple’s third child, she survived the attack and gave birth in her residence at Petite-Rivière-de-l’Artibonite. The child, a daughter named Aglaé-Marie-Charlotte-Elisabeth-Joséphine-Claudine de La Valette (1788 - 1790), died in infancy on the island. But the young marquise, herself, had died at her Caribbean home two years before, at the age of just twenty-seven years old.


Labille-Guiard’s portrait of the marquise was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1787, where it was listed in the livret as number 113 and was identified as portraying "M. de la Marquise de la Valette, pinçant de la harpe". Although it is possible that the painting could have been based on a drawing and executed after the sitter’s departure from France, it is more likely that she sat to the artist in 1786 before she undertook the journey. 

The Salon of 1787, where the present portrait was exhibited, marked the pinnacle of Labille-Guiard’s career. Of the nine identified portraits that the artist showed that year, two were of Mesdames, the two surviving unmarried aunts of the king; the life-size, full-length portrait of Madame Adélaïde was the most admired and discussed painting of the exhibition, after Jacques-Louis David’s "Death of Socrates." So pleased with the portraits were Mesdames that days before the opening of the Salon they had the artist appointed "Peintre de ces Princesses" - their official artist - a title which brought her esteem as well as further prestigious commissions.




Sunday, August 9, 2026

Strike a pose - portraits by Franz Xaver Setzer

 
Maria Jeritza in the title role of Turandot, 1926. 
Opera singer and sculptor Helge Lindberg, circa 1920.
Betty Fischer in Die Königin, 1927.
 Toni Birkmeyer in Prinz Karneval, 1927.
Gusti Pichler as Sulamith in Josefslegende, 1922.
Carina Ari (Maria Karina Viktoria Jansson) in "Anitra’s Dance," 1922. Two images.
Nora Gregor as Thaisa in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1937.
Conrad Veidt as Cesare in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920.
Grete Wiesenthal in Schwingen im Licht, 1924.
Leopoldine Konstantin in Das Weib und der Hampelmann, 1918.
Lena Amsel, 1918.
Mizzi Günther, 1918.
Riki Raab in Der Liebeszauber, 1929. Two images.
Raoul Aslan as Emperor Joseph II, 1937.
Marie Gutheil-Schoder - the photographer's wife - in the title role of Carmen, circa 1922.
Grete Wiesenthal in Der Taugenichts in Wien, 1930.
Hedy Pfundmayr in Ravel, 1923.
Maria Jeritza in the title role of Turandot, 1926. Two images.
Maria Ley, 1925.
Ellen Petz with her ensemble, circa 1920s.
Elsie Altmann-Loos as Miss Mabel Gibson in Die Zirkusprinzessin, 1926.
 Walter Slezak, circa 1922.
Hedy Pfundmayr in Schéhérazade, 1923.
Conrad Veidt as Cesare in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920.
Toni Birkmeyer, 1923.

*

Franz Xaver Setzer (born Franz Anton Adolf Setzer; 6 August 1886, Vienna – 10 January 1939, Vienna), Austrian photographer. After receiving his training at the Imperial Royal Institute of Prints and Drawings, he founded his own studio in 1909. The well-lit studio in the attic of the Museumstrasse 5 in the 7th district in Vienna was - as an early advertising card described - equipped with "a lift and a telephone", and personalities from the theatre and opera, music and literary scenes became enthusiastic patrons. In 1917 he received the Voigtländer Medal of the Photographic Society. He married the opera singer Marie Gutheil-Schoder in 1920, and this marriage expanded his social position; in addition to those in the Arts, aristocrats and politicians and the like were increasingly included among his clientele. In spite of competing for the same portrait subjects, it appears he had friendly relationships with his contemporary photographic colleagues, such as Madame d'Ora and Arthur Benda. The global economic crisis of the 1930s had a serious impact on his business and, also dealing with health concerns, he withdrew from the daily running of the studio. Marie Karoline Tschiedel, who had been his assistant for more than a decade, became the technical director of the studio in 1934, and increasingly assumed overall responsibility for the business. Setzer died at the age of fifty-two in 1939. Tschiedel took over the studio from his heirs and continued it under the name Setzer-Tschiedel until 1980.