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拍品專文
During his visit to London in 1880, Jules Bastien-Lepage was introduced by the artist, George Frederick Watts to Dorothy Tennant, daughter of Lady Gertrude and Sir Charles Tennant MP. A talented young woman, Miss Tennant had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and under Jean-Jacques Henner in Paris. A friendship ensued. Back in the 1840s, her mother had grown up in France, had befriended Gustave Flaubert in her youth, and family house parties in Whitehall were compared to Paris salons from the time of Louis-Philippe (McConkey 1978, p. 373). In this congenial Francophile ambiance, the present souvenir portrait was painted in 1882, during Lepage’s last visit to the British capital.
It is likely to have been painted in Dorothy’s studio while the artist was working on the celebrated Marchande de fleurs à Londres, (sold Christie’s New York, 10 November 2022), and the Petit cireur de bottes à Londres (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris) and several views of the Thames – works that she describes in The Art Journal. Lionised by London society, in previous years Lepage had painted portraits of Laura Alma-Tadema (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Henry Irving (National Portrait Gallery, London), Edward Burne-Jones (Birmingham Museums Trust) and the London-based cartoonist, Carlo Pellegrini (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).
Attending a dinner with Irving and Sarah Bernhardt at the Lyceum Theatre, Bram Stoker noted that Lepage spoke about his work with deep seriousness. ‘Je suis ré-a-liste!’ he declared, ‘… the short hair of his bullet head seemed to bristle like the hair of an excited cat …’ (Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 1906, vol II, p. 164). Short haircuts were trending at the time, as indeed were ‘smart’ tightly knotted neckties. His London hostess remembered the artist’s love of sharp suits, ordered, we are told, ‘from the most fashionable London tailor’ (Mrs H.M. Stanley, 1897, p. 56).
However, it is that almost ideological commitment to the record of lived experience that impressed Miss Tennant the most, and it is this that we carry away from the present work.
Professor Kenneth McConkey
It is likely to have been painted in Dorothy’s studio while the artist was working on the celebrated Marchande de fleurs à Londres, (sold Christie’s New York, 10 November 2022), and the Petit cireur de bottes à Londres (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris) and several views of the Thames – works that she describes in The Art Journal. Lionised by London society, in previous years Lepage had painted portraits of Laura Alma-Tadema (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Henry Irving (National Portrait Gallery, London), Edward Burne-Jones (Birmingham Museums Trust) and the London-based cartoonist, Carlo Pellegrini (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin).
Attending a dinner with Irving and Sarah Bernhardt at the Lyceum Theatre, Bram Stoker noted that Lepage spoke about his work with deep seriousness. ‘Je suis ré-a-liste!’ he declared, ‘… the short hair of his bullet head seemed to bristle like the hair of an excited cat …’ (Reminiscences of Henry Irving, 1906, vol II, p. 164). Short haircuts were trending at the time, as indeed were ‘smart’ tightly knotted neckties. His London hostess remembered the artist’s love of sharp suits, ordered, we are told, ‘from the most fashionable London tailor’ (Mrs H.M. Stanley, 1897, p. 56).
However, it is that almost ideological commitment to the record of lived experience that impressed Miss Tennant the most, and it is this that we carry away from the present work.
Professor Kenneth McConkey