4472

Study portrait

Comtesse Anna de Noailles, née princesse Anna Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan 1913

Head and shoulders to the left, full-face turned towards the viewer, wearing a frilled chiffon wrap around her shoulders and a long string of pearls which she holds in her right hand, raised to her breast

Oil on canvas, 93.3 x 75 cm (36 ¾ x 29 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / Paris 1913 II   

Sitters’ Book I, f. 92: Paris / 2 Mars / 1913 / Csse de Noailles

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

According to Rutter, de László painted the present portrait in Paris, on his way back to England after a long recuperation, having broken his leg in a tobogganing accident in Switzerland. It was completed in a couple of sittings. A letter written by the sitter to the artist after the portrait had been painted shows the great regard and affection the Comtesse felt for de László: “Je suis heureuse de vous dire que le beau portrait que vous avez fait de moi, au milieu des orages de nos conversations, de ma fatigue, du feu éteint, de la fenêtre entr’ouverte et des tulles dont les couleurs trop vives vous donnaient des élancements dans la jambe souffrante (est arrivé). J’espère de tout cœur que cette jambe est devenue aussi vaillante que votre infernal regard. Je vous remercie de tout le succès que je vous dois et vous prie de croire à toute mon admiration et mon amitié.” ^[1] 

She also signed the artist’s sitters’ book on a number of subsequent occasions. The present portrait was used by the engraver Pierrette Lambert as the basis for the likeness of Anna de Noailles on a commemorative postage stamp issued to mark the centenary of her birth: 15 November 1976.  

This portrait of the comtesse de Noailles was exhibited at the schismatic Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1913, where de László participated from 1912-1914; although he usually exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français. His portrait of the Baroness Baeyens [2825] that he exhibited there in 1912 was a great success and responsible for his election as an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After 1914 however, he returned to his former practice of exhibiting at the establishment Salon (Salon de la Société des Artistes Français), but only from 1925 until 1937.

There exists another study portrait of the sitter (head-and-shoulders, but not as finished) [5513], painted during the same sittings as the present portrait, which remained in the possession of the artist on his death and is now in a private collection.  De László went on to paint a more formal half length portrait of the sitter in 1921, which was destroyed during the Second World War [5144]. He made one last portrait of her in 1931, wearing the medal of the Légion d’Honneur which remains untraced [111307].  

Princesse Anna-Elizabeth Brancovan, born in Paris on 15 November 1876, was one of three^[2] children of the Romanian born Prince Grigore Brâncoveanu (Grégoire Brancovan) eldest son of the sovereign of Valachy, Georges-Demètre Bibesco and his wife Ralu (Rachel) Musurus, daughter of the Turkish Ambassador to London, Emmanuel-Grégoire. Both her grandmothers were Greek and her maternal grandfather, the Ambassador Constantin Musurus Pacha, was from the famous Cretan family.^[3] In August 1897, she married comte Mathieu Fernand Frédéric Pascal de Noailles in Publier, near the family castle in Amphion, Haute-Savoie.  He officially succeeded to the title of comte de Noailles in 1909, and his brother Hélie to the title of the marquis de Noailles, when his uncle died.^[4] They had a son, Anne-Jules-Emmanuel Grégoire born in 1900, who married into the de Wendel family. Anna and her husband were separated in 1912, although they remained close as a family.

Anna de Noailles was much admired for her poetry, and her friends included the novelists Marcel Proust, Pierre Loti, André Gide and Colette, the poets Paul Valéry and Jean Cocteau and chiefly the writer and politician Maurice Barrès. She started to write as a schoolgirl, aged thirteen, and in 1901 published her first collection, Le Coeur Innombrable. She went on to write and publish seventeen books, including eight other collections of poetry: L’Ombre des Jours (1902), Les Éblouissements (1907), Les Vivants et les Morts (1913), Les Forces éternelles (1920), Poème de l’Amour (1924), L’Honneur de Souffrir (1927) and Derniers Vers et Poèmes d’Enfance (1934), together with her many other books, short stories and novels, prose poems and autobiographical work. Her love for life deeply renewed the Romantic themes of the 19th century poets.

She was made a member of the Belgian Academy (1922) and of the Institute of Athens. In 1904 she was proposed for the French Légion d’Honneur, but refused as a woman and a young one at that. She was finally decorated in 1920 and in 1931 she was appointed the first woman Commander. She was painted a great number of times, most notably also by Jacques-Emile Blanche, La Gandara and Kees van Dongen. August Rodin made a bust of her in 1906. Anna de Noailles died in Paris on 30 April 1933, and was buried in the Bibesco-Brancovan Chapel at the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

The sitter was also painted by Jacques-Emile Blanche in 1912.^[5]

PROVENANCE:         

Acquired by the French Government from the artist, 1913;                        

Musée du Luxembourg, 1914;

Musée du Jeu de Paume, 1922;

M.N.A.M., 1946;

Musée d'Orsay, 1977

EXHIBITED:          

•Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1913, p. 20, no. 730

•Palais du Luxembourg, Ecoles Etrangères, Paris, 1924, no. 226, ill. p. 23

•Bibliothèque Nationale, Marcel Proust, Paris, 2000, no. 167, pp. 204-5, ill. with notes by Nicole Savy, Conservateur Général, Musée d’Orsay

LITERATURE:          

•L’Institut Néerlandais, Paris, cotes A.173-5: Correspondence between Léonce Bénédite, Director of the Musée de Luxembourg, and Philip de László, regarding the purchase of the picture

•Williams, Oakley ed. Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, Foreword by Comte Robert de Montesquiou, Hutchinson, London, 1921, pp. 193-96 and ill. facing p. 192

•Vita d’Arte, sixth year, volume XII, October 1913, n˚ 70, p. 113, ill.

•Bénédite, Léonce. The Luxembourg Museum Foreign Schools. Paris: H. Laurens, 1924, p. 83, ill.

•La Revue de l’art, February 1926, p. 115, ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 278

•Fels, Florent, L'Art Vivant, Cailler, Geneva, 1950, ill.

•Schnack, Ingebord, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leben und Werk im Bild, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1973 p. 151, ill.

•Broche, François. Anna de Noailles, un mystère en pleine lumière, éd. Robert Laffont, 1989, ill.

•Lacambre, Geneviève, Isabelle Compin & collaborateurs, Musée d’Orsay, Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures, Réunion des Musée Nationaux, 1990, vol. I, p. 247, ill.

•Glasgow, Ellen, La Vida Resguardada, Tapa dura, Madrid, 2008, ill. cover

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 133-134

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 218, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1913 diary, private collection, 13 June entry, p. 85

•DLA162-0378, Pesti Hírlap, 23 August 1913, p. 5

•DLA015-0075, letter from the Duchess de Gramont to de László, 14 April 1924

CC 2008