4247

Comtesse Greffulhe, née comtesse Elisabeth de Caraman-Chimay  1909

Half-length in profile to the left, three-quarter face looking to the viewer, wearing a black gown, a black choker with a pearl pendant, drop pearl earrings, her left hand to her breast

Oil on canvas, 105 x 75 cm (41.5 x 29.5 in.)

Inscribed lower left: P. A. László / 1909 / Paris   

Sitters’ Book I, f. 71: Caraman Chimay Greffulhe / 18 Dec 1905

Private Collection

De László was amongst several artists to immortalise the beauty of a woman who remained the unchallenged queen of Parisian Society for fifty years. Franceschi made a bust of the comtesse Greffulhe, and the painters Eugène Lami, la Gandara, Helleu and Fernand Khnopff all depicted her. However, the sitter was never fully satisfied with any of her portraits and similarly never consented in giving her photograph to anyone even to Marcel Proust who begged her for one. Robert de Montesquiou [4151] was the only exception.

The sitter was forty-nine when she sat to de László. According to family legend, the artist made dozens of sketches of this unique sitter, failing to do justice to her beauty.^[1] Considering de László’s unfailing technique, this anecdote seems unlikely, and perhaps her descendant was in fact thinking of Helleu, who followed the Comtesse Greffulhe everywhere for three days, making more than one hundred sketches of her, to try and “catch the essence of her personality.”^[2] 

There exists an unfinished portrait of the sitter's husband, Henry, comte Greffulhe [6935], which remains in the collection of a descendant of the sitter. De László painted more than thirty portraits of three generations of the de Gramont family over the years 1902 to 1931, being close friends with the sitter's son-in-law, Armand, 12th duc. The artist also painted an oil study of the sitter wearing a hat [destroyed], which remained in his studio on his death. That composition was perhaps rejected in favour of the present one.  

Elisabeth de Caraman-Chimay, was born on 11 July 1860, one of the six children of Prince Marie Joseph Guy Henry Philippe de Caraman Chimay (1836-1892) the Belgian Ambassador and then Minister of Foreign Affairs to France – and his wife Marie de Montesquiou Fezensac (1834-1884). Her family was well-respected, if not wealthy, and thanks to her good reputation and extraordinary beauty, Elisabeth de Caraman-Chimay married into money, on 28 September 1878, to the handsome and already somewhat dissipated comte Henri Jules Charles Emanuel de Greffulhe (1848-1932), the 3rd and last comte Greffulhe. The marriage was a happy one at first, but soon the comte resumed his life as a serial womanizer. Together they had one daughter, Elaine [8804] & [5515], born on 19 March 1882, who in 1904 married the 12th duc de Gramont [11801].

A distinguished and ubiquitously talented doyenne of Parisian Arts and Society over the turn of the century, she was a long standing confidante of her cousin Robert de Montesquiou, who had been painted by de László in 1905 [4151]. Perhaps her greatest admirer, he stole a sketch of her chin by La Gandara, and used to contemplate it untiringly in his bathtub.^[3] He was not, however, the only victim of her unequalled beauty, mystery, and charisma. Marcel Proust wrote about her: “She is difficult to judge, perhaps because judging is comparing, and that no component in her could have been seen in any other woman, and even in anything. But all the mystery of her beauty is in the glow, above all in the enigma of her eyes. I have never seen a woman as beautiful as her.”^[4] Boson de Talleyrand-Périgord [9870] was writing the most compromising declarations at the back of his banal letters to her, using invisible ink, Rodin was wearing her nightgown as a scarf, and both Robert Lytton and Paul Deschanel – who would become President of the French Republic – were deeply in love with her.

Her original taste in music and powers of persuasion were such that she was instrumental in getting Diaghilev's Ballet Russe to come to Paris. She introduced the general public to Gabriel Fauré, did a lot for the recognition of Wagner in France during her presidency of the Société des Grandes Auditions Musicales, helped popularise the art of Gustave Moreau and Whistler, and supported the pioneering work of Pierre and Marie Curie. The sitter herself was a talented pupil of the photographer Nadar. At her salon at 10 rue d’Astorg, she entertained the intellectual, artistic, and political élite for decades. She later launched a fashion for greyhound racing. The sitter died in Geneva on 21 August 1952.

EXHIBITED:        

•Agnew’s, London, On Behalf of the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution. Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, M.V.O., May-June 1911, n° 6

•Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Marcel Proust, 1965, n° 171

•Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, Exposition Marcel Proust, end of May-September 1971

•Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Diaghilev, Les Ballet russes, 1979, to be confirmed

•Musée d’Orsay, L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo au temps du Prince Albert Ier de Monaco, Winter 1990-1991, n° 38, ill. p. 16, to be confirmed

LITERATURE:          

•Colucci, Virginia, Un Maestro del Ritratto: Philip A. Làszló (sic), Siena: L. Lazzeri, 1910, p. 3 ill.

•DLA 1911 parcel, La Ilustración Artística, n° 1552, pp. 625-626, ill.

•The Illustrated London News, 27 May 1911, ill., p. 789

•The Illustrated London News (New York Edition), 10 June 1911, p. 853, ill.

•Schleinitz, Otto (von). Künstler Monographien Ph A.v. László, Bielefed and Leipzig, (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, ill. p. 99, pl. 116

•Williams, Oakley, ed., Selections from the Work of P. A. de László, Foreword by comte Robert de Montesquiou, Hutchinson, London, 1921, pp. 85-8, ill. facing p. 84

•“Every Court but China”, in Time Magazine, vol. XIX, number 4, 25 January 1932, pp. 26-8

•Maurois, André, Le Monde de Marcel Proust, Hachette, 1960, p. 32, ill.

•Apollo, August 1965

•Crespelles, J. P., Les Maitres de la Belle Epoque, Hachette, France, 1966, ill. p.25, pl. 28

•Jullian, Philippe, Robert Montesquiou: A Fin-de-Siècle Prince, London, 1967, pp. 236, 275

•Ritter, Raymond, La Maison de Gramont 1040-1967, Tome Second, Les Amis du Musée Pyrénéen, Tarbes, 1967, pl. XXII

•Clifford, Derek, The Paintings of P. A. de Laszlo, London, 1969, monochrome ill. pl. 20

•Schurr, G. 1820-1920, Les petits maîtres de la peinture, valeur de demain, Paris, les Editions de l’amateur, 1975, p. 95

•Cossé-Brissac, Anne (de), La Comtesse Greffulhe, terre des femmes, Perrin, Paris, 1991

•Chaleyssin, Patrick, La Peinture Mondaine de 1870 à 1960, Celia Editions, Ermont, France, 1993, p. 50, pl. 87

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 81, ill. 46

•Hillerin, Laure, La comtesse Greffulhe: L’ombre des Guermantes, Editions Flammarion, Paris, 2014, pp. 207-208, 400, ill. front cover

•Neutres, Jérôme, Chaumet Paris: An Artistic Heart, Assouline, New York, 2017, ill. p. 63

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 60

CC 2008