Madame Gautreau redux - portrait of madame Pierre Gautreau by Gustave Courtois, 1891

 

Virginie Amélie Gautreau (née Avegno; 29 January 1859, New Orelans – 25 July 1915, Paris), an American-born Parisian socialite. Her French Creole father died during the Civil War, her younger sister soon after, and the following year her French-born mother returned to France with her surviving child, the eight-year-old Virginie; she would, throughout her life, go by her middle name Amélie. Educated at a convent school, at the age of nineteen she married forty-year-old banker and shipping magnate Pierre Gautreau. They had a daughter the following year; after her marriage in 1901, they would live separately. Considered one of Parisian society's most fashionable beauties - she was often referred to as la belle Mme. Gautreau in the press - she cut a particularly striking figure with her hennaed hair and extremely pale skin, accentuated further by her use of lavender-tinted face powder. 

John Singer Sargent, still early in his career and captivated by the extreme "picturesqueness" of the lady, asked if he might paint her portrait. He made several sketches and the final work was included in the Paris Salon of 1884, where Sargent hoped it would prove a boost to his career. Instead, it provoked a scandal. The critics and public were offended by the great expanses of unadorned and violently pale skin and, more than anything, the fallen strap; Sargent had painted the right strap of her gown as having slipped from her shoulder. It was seen as just too suggestive, certainly too much so for a respectable society portrait, and the artist and model were accused of being deliberately provocative. 

A contemporary photograph of Sargent's portrait in its original state.

Madame Gautreau refused the painting, and Sargent, depressed and abashed, decamped for London, taking the painting with him. Later he painted out the offending strap, repainting it in its "proper" place. But he was always proud of the piece, though, displaying it prominently in his studios in Paris and London. And in 1916, when he sold the painting - now discretely dubbed "Madame X" - to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he wrote of it to the museum's director, "I suppose it is the best thing I have ever done."

Madame X (portrait of madame Pierre Gautreau), by John Singer Sargent, 1883-84.

In the midst of the scandal, Madame Gautreau, embarrassed, had temporarily stepped away from the spotlight, but she seems to have developed rather an affection for its glare, a taste for a certain degree of notoriety. And seven years later she herself commissioned something of a response to Sargent's portrait. And in her portrait by Courtois she is every bit as unadorned - "naked" - as in Sargent's, her skin is as freakishly pale, her décolletage as deep, and in an amazingly cheeky reference to the scandalous work of 1884 - and which was instigated by the model - the strap was once again down. And it stayed down.

She commissioned another portrait, seven years after the Courtois, this time by Antonio de La Gándara; the suave result was said to have been her favorite. 

Madame Pierre Gautreau, by Antonio de La Gándara, 1897 or 1898.

There were other, later, portraits, completed after the turn of the century, when she was nearly fifty. The results, even with all the artists' flattery, pointed out the reality of her faded looks and she retreated from the world, becoming a recluse until her death at the age of fifty-six. So there was no hint of notoriety in her last years, though her will prominently included the names of two men, Victor-Amédée Callaux and Henri Favalelli, who were totally unknown to her family....

A contemporary illustration of the painting.

The Courtois portrait is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.

Just as in the Sargent portrait, the strikingly pink/orange ear against so much white skin is rather alarming.

Chasing Velázquez, chasing Manet - "Manuelito, the Circus Lad" by Glyn Philpot, 1909

 

This is the painting said to have launched Philpot's career. He had begun his formal art education at the Lambeth School of Art at the age of only fifteen and later, in 1905, at the Académie Julian in Paris. But the first great turning point in his artistic development came in 1908, during his travels in Spain. Upon returning to Britain, he embarked on a series of paintings inspired by his experiences in Spain, work that clearly shows the lingering influence of Goya and Velázquez, those artists that had, previously, had such a strong effect on, among others, Manet and Sargent. (In fact, it's nearly impossible not to see a direct line from Manet's Spanish-themed paintings to this piece.) 

"Manuelito, the Circus Lad" was first exhibited at the Modern Society of Portrait Painters in 1910, causing a sensation, and focusing the spotlight on the young artist, who would soon become a greatly sought-after society portraitist. After being shown at the Venice Biennale in that same year, the painting was bought by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in whose collection it still resides.

An imperial jewel... and a small mystery - ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch, circa 1850s

 

After France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire in 1871, the Empress Eugénie fled to England, where she subsequently sold many of her jewels. This particular brooch was bought by Harry Emanuel, a London jeweler; his firm provided the purple velvet case in which the piece is still kept. Later, Mrs. Ernest Raphael, née Flora Cecilia Sassoon, acquired the piece and wore it when her portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905.

Of French make, the brooch is set throughout with round-cut rubies and old mine-cut and pear-shaped diamonds, terminating in three pear-shaped natural pearl drops. The setting is silver and gold.

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Flora Cecilia Sassoon, the daughter of Kate Ezekiel and Reuben Sassoon; she married Ernest Raphael, a London financier, in May of 1893.

Even as described by Sargent's gloriously impressionistic brushwork, the Empress' brooch is easily identifiable.

Both the brooch and the painting remained in the Raphael family until 1983, at which point they were offered for sale at Christie's. The brooch was purchased by a private collector in South Carolina; in 2017, the piece was once again sold at auction.

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The "mystery" is this. This ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch. Frequently found in online searches and always identified as the brooch formerly belonging to the Empress, the very same brooch that is featured in this post, but... it is not. It's all very, very similar but, when one observes it closely, it's clear that it isn't the same piece. So what is this, this very close copy? How did it come to be, when and for whom?

Water, sun, and war - "Tommies Bathing," two watercolors by John Singer Sargent, 1918

 

Sargent painted the two watercolors known as "Tommies Bathing" in the summer of 1918. He had been commissioned by the British government for a painting that would commemorate the efforts of the Americans and British in World War I, so he traveled to the front in the valley of the Somme to find a subject. During his sojourn, he painted several studies and unrelated informal watercolors, including these two evocative images. 

While the origin of the term "Tommy" is widely disputed, the most common explanation is that it derives from "Tommy Atkins," a fictitious name which is slang for a common soldier in the British Army, and which is known to have been used as early as 1743. The term "Tommy" was chosen as a generic name by the war office in 1815, becoming well established during the nineteenth century, but is particularly associated with the British soldiers of the First World War. In more recent times, the term has been used much less frequently, although the name "Tom" is occasionally still heard; private soldiers in the British Army's Parachute Regiment are still referred to as "Toms".

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Now, moving from the picturesque to the reality....

British soldiers in a farm pond near St. Eloi, Flanders, June 1917, likely after the Battle of Messines. (Two images.)

British soldiers bathing in the river at Maroeuil, near Arras, 20 May 1918.

British soldiers during a swim somewhere in the Somme region, France, 1916. (Two images.)

The tender line - a selection of portrait drawings and studies

 

Jonathan (Portrait of Jonathan Tichenor), by Paul Cadmus, 1942.

Lucien Simon, by Ramon Casas, 1900.

Sketch of a model, probably Nicola d'Inverno, by John Singer Sargent, circa 1890-1915.

Self-portrait, by Valentin Serov, 1883.

Portrait by O. Metzler, circa 1920s.

Portrait en buste de profil vers la gauche d'Alexandre-Michel Beljame à Rome, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1812.

 Leighton "Luckie" Lucas, by Dame Laura Knight, 1920.

Portrait study, by John Singer Sargent, 1911.

Portrait of Carl Rosenlächer, by Marie Ellenrieder, circa 1840-45.

Portrait of René Degas, the artist's brother, by Edgar Degas, circa 1859.

 My son Boris, by Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, 1923.

 Young Man Looking Left, by Francesco Salviati, circa 1540.

Noel Carrington, the artist's brother, by Dora Carrington, circa 1912.

 Portrait of an Eighteen Year Old Youth, by Albrecht Dürer, 1503.

Self-portrait, by Mark Gertler, 1909.

Head of a Man, by Adolph von Menzel, 1886 (?).

Portrait of a Boy, by Hans Robert Pippal, 1941.

Ursin-Jules Vatinelle, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1820.

Portrait eines jungen Mannes im Profil von links, by Marie Ellenrieder, circa second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Henry Sturgis Russell, by John Singer Sargent, 1924,

Assan, a Young Man, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, circa 1855-56.

 Portrait of a Young Man, by Nicholas Henri Jacob, 1821.