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拍品專文
Combining cubist synthesis with a sense of futurist dynamism, Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) belongs to a tight and remarkable series of three watercolours executed by Gino Severini in 1913, which includes Ritratto di Mlle Suzanne Merven del Varieté (Estorick Collection, London) and Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort (private collection). Sharing strong stylistic similarities, the group presents three female portraits, each animated by the presence of a dashing, dynamic feathered hat. The sitters of these portraits all belonged to the Parisian high-spirited world of cabarets and cafés through which Severini moved with confidence and enthusiasm in the early 1900s. When the artist, years later, offered Ritratto di Mlle Suzanne Merven del Varieté to his futurist friend Marinetti, he nostalgically wrote on it: 'To my dear friend Marinetti in remembrance of the beautiful events of a time now past, with still great affection Gino Severini'. But while Ritratto di Mlle Suzanne Merven del Varieté depicted the glamorous attire of a cabaret dancer in syncopated forms, the other two drawings of the series portrayed sitters to whom the artist was more intimately and personally related. In Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort, Severini depicted the young girl he would that very year marry, while in the present work he focused on his future mother-in-law, Madame Fort, wife of the symbolist poet Paul Fort, known, in the intellectual circles of Montparnasse as the 'Prince of Poets'.
Severini was first introduced to Paul Fort and his literary 'court' through Marinetti in 1911. At the time, the 'Prince of Poets' used to hold regular gatherings at the Closerie des Lilas, entertaining and attracting a broad range of writers and intellectuals. While Paul Fort was undoubtably the centre of such events, his wife and daughter were also regularly present and actively involved. In his autobiography, Severini would recall: 'Around 1909, or rather in the winter bridging 1908 and 1909, the Vers et Prose poets began to hold their weekly “Tuesday soirées” [at the Closerie], gathering around Paul Fort… He was truly the center of the group that crowded together at tables, around him, his wife and his barely fourteen-year old daughter' (G. Severini, The Life of a Painter, New Jersey, 1995, pp. 69, 71). Immediately fond of Paul Fort and increasingly charmed by the strong-willed and decisive character of his daughter Jeanne, Severini became a regular guest at the Closerie de Lilas. By 1913, the year Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) was executed, Severini had decided to marry Jeanne, sealing his proximity and affection for the Fort family in official terms.
Viewed as a pair, Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) and Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort offer an insight into the strategies Severini adopted in order to convey through forms the different ages that are mirrored in the figures of the mother and daughter. While the broad forms and playful red of Jeanne's hat visually evoke the restrained elegance of a young, unmarried woman, the more sophisticated tall construction of Madame Fort's hat, toppled with fluctuating long feathers, stand for the mannered elegance which is acquired with age. Attentive to the significance of the sitters' attire, Severini carefully – almost strategically – selected evocative, distinct details from the dresses of the two women, succeeding in synthesising in his futurist aesthetic salient characteristics of their person: for Jeanne, he decided to focus on the starched white collar of her youthful dress, while for Madame Fort, he captured the elaborate buckle of her coat, evoking more stately garments. While in Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort, only the profile of the nose and a rebellious lock of hair have survived the transformation of her figure into a futurist image, in Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) Severini inserted a slick brushstroke, evoking the presence of an alert, confident eye lurking just below the majestic dynamism of a fashionable hat and endowing the portrait with a sense of stature and sharp presence.
In 1913 – the year in which Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) and the two related watercolours were executed – Severini exhibited thirty works in an important exhibition which took place at the Marlborough Gallery in London and, subsequently, at Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. Ritratto di Mlle Suzanne Merven del Varieté and Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort were exhibited in both shows, suggesting that the artist considered the series to be among his most recent significant achievements. In the London catalogue, Severini appended an explanatory notes to his drawings: 'Same abstraction and same search for the arabesque and rhythm but remaining in an intermediate zone between the pictorial and the plastic execution' (D. Fonti, Gino Severini: Catalogo ragionato, Milano, 1988, no. 155, p. 153). In writing these words, the artist may have wished to acknowledge the specific dimension of drawing, as a medium related to, yet independent from painting. Although governed by the same aesthetic quest that directed the artist in his paintings, drawing allowed Severini to relinquish purely pictorial problems – such as the all-encompassing presence of colour and its total integration with forms – to concentrate on ideas of construction, dynamism and forms. Although executed in watercolour, and hence exploiting colour to evoke texture, materials and details, Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) ultimately appears as a delicate, intricate construction of lines, endowed with a finesse and lightness that is altogether absent from the portrait paintings the artist executed at the time.
Severini was first introduced to Paul Fort and his literary 'court' through Marinetti in 1911. At the time, the 'Prince of Poets' used to hold regular gatherings at the Closerie des Lilas, entertaining and attracting a broad range of writers and intellectuals. While Paul Fort was undoubtably the centre of such events, his wife and daughter were also regularly present and actively involved. In his autobiography, Severini would recall: 'Around 1909, or rather in the winter bridging 1908 and 1909, the Vers et Prose poets began to hold their weekly “Tuesday soirées” [at the Closerie], gathering around Paul Fort… He was truly the center of the group that crowded together at tables, around him, his wife and his barely fourteen-year old daughter' (G. Severini, The Life of a Painter, New Jersey, 1995, pp. 69, 71). Immediately fond of Paul Fort and increasingly charmed by the strong-willed and decisive character of his daughter Jeanne, Severini became a regular guest at the Closerie de Lilas. By 1913, the year Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) was executed, Severini had decided to marry Jeanne, sealing his proximity and affection for the Fort family in official terms.
Viewed as a pair, Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) and Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort offer an insight into the strategies Severini adopted in order to convey through forms the different ages that are mirrored in the figures of the mother and daughter. While the broad forms and playful red of Jeanne's hat visually evoke the restrained elegance of a young, unmarried woman, the more sophisticated tall construction of Madame Fort's hat, toppled with fluctuating long feathers, stand for the mannered elegance which is acquired with age. Attentive to the significance of the sitters' attire, Severini carefully – almost strategically – selected evocative, distinct details from the dresses of the two women, succeeding in synthesising in his futurist aesthetic salient characteristics of their person: for Jeanne, he decided to focus on the starched white collar of her youthful dress, while for Madame Fort, he captured the elaborate buckle of her coat, evoking more stately garments. While in Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort, only the profile of the nose and a rebellious lock of hair have survived the transformation of her figure into a futurist image, in Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) Severini inserted a slick brushstroke, evoking the presence of an alert, confident eye lurking just below the majestic dynamism of a fashionable hat and endowing the portrait with a sense of stature and sharp presence.
In 1913 – the year in which Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) and the two related watercolours were executed – Severini exhibited thirty works in an important exhibition which took place at the Marlborough Gallery in London and, subsequently, at Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. Ritratto di Mlle Suzanne Merven del Varieté and Ritratto di Mlle Jeanne Paul Fort were exhibited in both shows, suggesting that the artist considered the series to be among his most recent significant achievements. In the London catalogue, Severini appended an explanatory notes to his drawings: 'Same abstraction and same search for the arabesque and rhythm but remaining in an intermediate zone between the pictorial and the plastic execution' (D. Fonti, Gino Severini: Catalogo ragionato, Milano, 1988, no. 155, p. 153). In writing these words, the artist may have wished to acknowledge the specific dimension of drawing, as a medium related to, yet independent from painting. Although governed by the same aesthetic quest that directed the artist in his paintings, drawing allowed Severini to relinquish purely pictorial problems – such as the all-encompassing presence of colour and its total integration with forms – to concentrate on ideas of construction, dynamism and forms. Although executed in watercolour, and hence exploiting colour to evoke texture, materials and details, Ritratto di Madame Paul Fort (Dynamisme d'un chapeau) ultimately appears as a delicate, intricate construction of lines, endowed with a finesse and lightness that is altogether absent from the portrait paintings the artist executed at the time.