8770

Study portrait

Madame Louis-René de Gramont, styled comtesse de Gramont, née Antoinette de Rochechouart-Mortemart 1931

Head-and-shoulders only, her head turned in three-quarter profile to the right, bare shouldered and without jewellery

Oil on board, 73 x 48.3 cm (28 ¾ x 19 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1931 [pencil]

Private Collection

The dating of this study is particularly puzzling as the pose, expression and palette chosen by the artist, is very close to the finished portrait he made of Antoinette de Gramont [8768] in 1921. One would assume they they were executed at the same time. It is unlikely that the present study was a preparatory work for the finished portrait, as it is too big and too worked up to be so. In this respect, the study might have been a rejected version, but the fact that it was exhibited in 1931 challenges this assumption too.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [8768].

EXHIBITED:        

Hôtel Charpentier, Paris, Exposition P.A. László, 1931, no. 47

CC 2008