4352

Baroness Emile d'Erlanger, née Catherine de Robert d’Aqueria de Rochegude 1899

Seated three-quarter length in profile to the right, playing a harp, wearing a white classical robe, a wreath of ivy leaves in her hair and a spray of white camellia on the chaise-longue beside her

Oil on canvas, 109.9 x 84.5 cm (43 ¼  x 33 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / Somerley / X. 99   

Sitters’ Book I, f. 30: Emile B d’Erlanger / Rochegude [among signatures dated 1899]

Private Collection

Of the five portraits in oil de László made of Baroness Emile d’Erlanger, the present one is by far the most famous, probably because it emphasises her role as a patroness of the arts, together with her thespian leanings. The neo-classical style of the painting, which is a rare occurrence in de László’s oeuvre, may well have been the artist’s tribute to her French origins. In 1899, de László was still at an early stage in his career and more responsive to the wishes of his patrons. It is possible that Catherine d’Erlanger asked de László to portray her thus to mark for posterity her significant involvement with the arts and with music in particular. Terpsichore, the Greek Goddess of music and dance, is evoked by the artist’s motif of the sitter playing the harp. The ivy wreath and her lilac stole, draped and diaphanous, serve to emphasise her creamy skin and red hair.

According to Owen Rutter,^[1] two three-quarter length portraits, of the sitter and her husband Baron Emile, painted at Somerley^[2] earned the honorarium of £500 each in 1899, the highest price he had yet been paid. However a portrait of the sitter’s father-in-law, Baron Frederic, inscribed “1899 XII Somerley” was recently traced [11230], and may well be the so-called pendant to the present portrait. Over a number of years, Baron Emile d'Erlanger rented Somerley for part of the shooting season. There exists another de László portrait, of an unidentified lady [8924], also painted at Somerley in October 1899.^[3] 

Rutter wrote that the d’Erlangers thought so highly of de László’s work that already in 1899 the Baroness had written to Thomas Agnew & Sons, asking them to exhibit his portrait of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar [10512] in their gallery and suggesting that they might be the first to arrange a one-man exhibition for him. That portrait was exhibited at Agnew’s in 1900 but de László’s one-man exhibition took place at the Fine Art Society in 1907. Agnew’s held two successful exhibitions of his work in 1911 and 1913.

Catherine Marie Rose Antoinette ‘Mimi’ de Robert d’Aqueria de Rochegude, Baroness d’Erlanger, was the daughter of the Marquis d’Aqueria de Rochegude. Born in Paris in 1874, she was brought up in the family château, near Orange in Provence, and married the railway magnate and financier Baron Emile Beaumont d'Erlanger on 6 February 1895. Together they had four children, one of whom died in infancy.

The couple lived for many years in Lord Byron’s former home, 139 Piccadilly,^[4] where Baroness Mimi established a famous artistic and musical salon and was one of the great European society hostesses of the first decades of the last century. She and her husband were both very supportive of de László during his early career in London, promoting him all over England. She was also a patron of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, and of Cecil Beaton. Romaine Brooks painted Baroness Emile in 1924, the same year as she painted her other Sapphic friend Elisabeth de Gramont [4506]. Besides their London house, the d’Erlangers owned Falconwood, a mansion near Shooter’s Hill, as well as properties in Bath, Paris, Deauville, and the Villa Rosa in Venice, where she held a celebrated annual costume ball. Perhaps Baroness d’Erlanger’s most lasting achievement was the restoration, with her dear friend Bertie Landsberg, of Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta, just outside Venice. After her husband died in 1939, she moved to Hollywood, where she lived until her death in 1959.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family;

David Messum Fine Art Ltd., London

EXHIBITED:          

•Paris Salon, Salon de la société des artistes français 1900

•New Gallery, London, 12th Exhibition of the Society of Portrait Painters, 1902

•Fine Art Society, London, An Exhibition of Portrait Paintings and Drawings by Philip A. László, May and June 1907, no. 2

•Traditional and Impressionist Paintings at The Studio, Messum’s, London, Spring 2002, no. 51

LITERATURE:          

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 181

•DLA090-0072, French press cutting [undated, presumably 1900]

•DLA140-0113, Új Idők, vol.VII, issue 27, Budapest: Singer és Wolfner, 30 June 1901, p. 17, ill.

•DLA162-0075, Pesti Hírlap, 5 January 1902, p. 10

•DLA140-0183, ”French and Hungarian Art in London”, The Graphic, 22 June 1907, p. 917, ill.

•DLA140-0244, Colucci, Virginia, Un Maestro del Ritratto: Philip A. Làszló (sic), Siena: L. Lazzeri, 1910, p. 5

CC 2008