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Lot Essay
Lempicka painted Femme à la robe jaune on her first trip to America, where she stayed from mid-October 1929 to early the following year. She had come to New York to fulfill a commission from Rufus T. Bush, the son a New York millionaire, for a portrait of his wife Joan, née Jeffery, whom he had just married. Lempicka charged four times her normal rate to adjust for the strong dollar, and the need to cover her living expenses in America. At first the artist had difficulty painting Mrs. Bush's portrait, as her sitter's numerous visitors during the sessions often distracted her. Lempicka was an assertive woman in her own right, and from her experience as a self-made and successful artist she was far more ambitious and independent than any of the women in the New York coterie she now moved among. She threatened to withdraw and return to Paris, but then decided to give in to the "American way." Her daughter Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall recounted: "Everyday now people came, and they all sat around and drank and talked while she painted away. When the painting was done [fig. 1], she wrote that she thought it was one of her best portraits" (in Passion by Design, The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka, New York, 1987, p. 101).
It was perhaps during one of Mrs. Bush's open, salon-like sittings that Lempicka was introduced to the beautiful subject of the present painting, who has not been identified. It may not have been a commissioned portrait, for the artist kept it and took it back with her to France. Lempicka clearly identified with her sitter, perhaps even projecting some of her own individualistic qualities into the figure of this young woman, whose body she rendered in strong and solid sculpted forms, while at the same time capturing her almost feline sensuality and allure. "Wearing a saffron dress that stands out against the gray background of a stormy sky," Alain Blondel has noted, "this blond young lady, with a disillusioned expression on her face, recaptures, almost entirely, the pose struck by Madame de Récamier," referring to the famous portrait in the Louvre painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1800 (in cat. rais., op. cit.).
She is perhaps more restlessly poised for action than disillusioned, warily eyeing her surroundings. Indeed, Lempicka now found herself in a similar position. Only a couple of weeks after she arrived in New York, the stock market crashed. The brash and passionate era embodied in the image of the fiery red dress that Lempicka had selected for Mrs. Bush to wear in her portrait had come to an end. The New York bank in which the artist had deposited her earnings from the Bush portrait had folded, and she was compelled to extend her planned stay of three weeks to last through the end of the year in order to work to recoup her losses. The color yellow, in flowing folds, emblematic of optimism and hope contrasted against a stormy sky, reflected her resolve amid the turbulence and uncertainty of a new decade. By the time Lempicka returned to France early in the new year, she had a successful exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and had established a reputation in America as the one of the leading women artists on the international scene.
(fig. 1) Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de Mrs. Bush, 1929. Sold, Christie's, New York, 4 May 2004, lot 36.
It was perhaps during one of Mrs. Bush's open, salon-like sittings that Lempicka was introduced to the beautiful subject of the present painting, who has not been identified. It may not have been a commissioned portrait, for the artist kept it and took it back with her to France. Lempicka clearly identified with her sitter, perhaps even projecting some of her own individualistic qualities into the figure of this young woman, whose body she rendered in strong and solid sculpted forms, while at the same time capturing her almost feline sensuality and allure. "Wearing a saffron dress that stands out against the gray background of a stormy sky," Alain Blondel has noted, "this blond young lady, with a disillusioned expression on her face, recaptures, almost entirely, the pose struck by Madame de Récamier," referring to the famous portrait in the Louvre painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1800 (in cat. rais., op. cit.).
She is perhaps more restlessly poised for action than disillusioned, warily eyeing her surroundings. Indeed, Lempicka now found herself in a similar position. Only a couple of weeks after she arrived in New York, the stock market crashed. The brash and passionate era embodied in the image of the fiery red dress that Lempicka had selected for Mrs. Bush to wear in her portrait had come to an end. The New York bank in which the artist had deposited her earnings from the Bush portrait had folded, and she was compelled to extend her planned stay of three weeks to last through the end of the year in order to work to recoup her losses. The color yellow, in flowing folds, emblematic of optimism and hope contrasted against a stormy sky, reflected her resolve amid the turbulence and uncertainty of a new decade. By the time Lempicka returned to France early in the new year, she had a successful exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and had established a reputation in America as the one of the leading women artists on the international scene.
(fig. 1) Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de Mrs. Bush, 1929. Sold, Christie's, New York, 4 May 2004, lot 36.