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Duchesse de Gramont, née Baroness Marguerite-Alexandrine von Rothschild 1902

Seated full-length to the right and looking to the left on a carved wood garden seat, wearing a full red silk gown with a frilled lace trimming on the neckline and full white organza cuffs on the sleeves which are also decorated with black bows at the elbow; a pearl necklace attached with a brooch to her dress at her breast and a large black hat with a red feather, all against a landscape background

Oil on canvas, 216 x 127 cm (85 x 50 in.)

Inscribed lower centre: László F.E. / Valliere 1902

Sitters’ Book I, f. 59: Rothschild Gramont / Valliere 19 Septembre / 1902

Maison de Gramont Collection, Musée National et Domaine du Château de Pau

This full-length portrait of the duchesse de Gramont was originally part of one the two large group portraits de László painted of the de Gramont family, which were later divided into six individual paintings, see [8752]. The sitters in this second portrait were the duchesse de Gramont (the present portrait), her elder son, Antoine XII-Armand [11801], and her daughter Corisande [6625]. Antoine XI-Agénor, 11th duc de Gramont, commissioned de László to paint a portrait in the style of 18th century British paintings of the aristocracy^[1] and amongst all the sitters portrayed, the present portrait is probably the closest, with that of Elisabeth de Gramont, to what he had in mind.

This is a significant example of de László’s early portraiture, both from a compositional and stylistic point of view, for which the artist used a very detailed and smooth brushwork. The way in which the hair of the sitter is painted, together with the graceful positioning of her arms, recalls Gainsborough’s famous portrait of Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1785-1787), although de László’s depiction of his aristocratic sitter is far more formal than Gainsborough’s treatment of his.

Marguerite-Alexandrine von Rothschild was born on 19 September 1855. She was one of the seven daughters of Baron Carl Mayer von Rothschild of Frankfurt (1820-1886), banker and art collector,^[2] and his wife Louise von Rothschild (1820-1894). Baroness von Rothschild had decided that her two younger daughters would marry outside the family and preferably to French men. She therefore approved of the marriage of Marguerite-Alexandrine with the distinguished widower Antoine XI-Agénor, 11th duc de Gramont. The marriage took place on 10 December 1878. Carl Mayer, on the other hand, did not attend the wedding, and later disowned his daughter for marrying outside the Jewish faith. Nevertheless, when he died in 1886, Louise von Rothschild and her six other daughters all agreed to give Marguerite-Alexandrine her inheritance, sixty million francs in gold.^[3] Although the couple did not change their simple way of life for the first couple of years, they later bought a ‘hôtel particulier’, a mansion, at the corner of the rue de Chaillot and the Champs-Elysées, and commissioned the Château de Vallière on the Mortefontaine estate. Marguerite-Alexandrine became one of the greatest hostesses of the time. Her step-daughter Elisabeth de Gramont estimated in her Mémoires that her parents entertained 90,000 guests over the years at rue de Chaillot.^[4] Two sons and a daughter were born of the marriage: Antoine XII-Armand, later 12th duc (born 1879), Corisande, later duchesse de Noailles (born 1880), and comte Louis-René (born 1883). In the winter 1903, the sitter caught a cold at the funeral of her sister Berthe, duchesse de Wagram, and never truly recovered from the pneumonia that followed. Becoming gradually weaker over the next eighteen months, she died on 25 July 1905.

SOURCE: Rapazzini, Francesco. Elisabeth de Gramont Avant-Gardiste, Collection

Vies de Femmes, Fayard, 2004

PROVENANCE:        

By descent in the family;

Maison de Gramont Collection, on long-term loan to the Musée Basque de la ville de

Bayonne

EXHIBITED:

•Paris, Salon de la société des artistes français, 1903, nº 1054 or 1055

•Musée National du Château de Pau, La Belle époque des Gramonts au temps des équipages, 7 October 1994-31 January 1995, ill., handlist nº 29

LITERATURE :         

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 210

•Chaleyssin, Patrick, La Peinture mondaine de 1870 à 1960, Editions Celia, 1993, ill.

p. 32, pl. 55

•De Laszlo, Sandra ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with

Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 92, fig. 61

•Arsène, Alexandre, ‘Société des Artistes français, Salon de 1903’, in  Figaro Illustré,

nº 159, June 1903, p. 19

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University 

 Press, 2010, p. 79-81

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 66

•László, Lucy de, 1908-1911 diary, 27 December 1908 entry, p. 39

CC 2008