6550

Preparatory work  

La duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, née Elisabeth de Gramont 1902

Head-and-shoulders slightly to the right looking to the viewer, wearing a straw hat

Oil on board, 66 x 49 cm (26 x 19 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: László  F.E. / 1902 / Vallière

Sitters’ Book I, f. 60: Clermont-Tonnerre Ctesse Chandon / 11 November 1902

Private Collection

De László painted this study at the time of painting the seated full-length portrait of the sitter which was originally included in a larger group portrait later cut down [8752]. De László spent three months at the de Gramont country seat, Vallière, to complete the two large group portraits of the family that his patriarch, Agénor-XI de Gramont, had commissioned him to paint. Thus he became friends with the family. As the sitter herself put it, the sittings produced “two more paintings, and a new friend, as Laszlo [sic] is, despite his many absences, the dearest and best friend of the de Gramont family.”^[1] 

The artist made a considerable number of sketches of each individual sitter as preliminary works for the formal portraits. De László offered the present portrait to the sitter as a token of his friendship and it must have been particularly treasured as she bequeathed it to her companion Blanche Gay, together with her other most precious possessions.

PROVENANCE:        

Blanche Gay, the sitter’s companion;

Sold Christie’s, London, 17 June 2014, lot 89;

Private Collection

LITERATURE :        

•Les Modes, no. 27, 1903, ill.

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

•Rapazzini, Francesco, Elisabeth de Gramont Avant-gardiste, collection Vie de Femmes, Fayard, Paris, 2004, ill. opp. p. 319

•Gramont, Elisabeth (de), Mémoires II, Les Marroniers en fleurs, Grasset, Paris, 1939, p. 128

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 80-81

CC 2008