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JACQUES ÉMILE BLANCHE (Paris, 1861-Offranville, 1942)
PORTRA…
See original version (French)
67
-
JACQUES ÉMILE BLANCHE (Paris, 1861-Offranville, 1942)
PORTRA…
See original version (French)
Estimate €50,000 - €70,000
Voluntary lot
Description
JACQUES ÉMILE BLANCHE (Paris, 1861-Offranville, 1942)
PORTRAITS OF PIERRE LOUŸS (1870-1925) AND HENRI DE RÉGNIER, HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW (1864-1936)
Canvas
Signed and dated lower right "J. E. Blanche 93 / Mr. P. Louÿs et H. de Régnier"; dedication and date legible with IR reflectography "a Pierre Louÿs / mai 92 J. E: Blanche... / M. r. P. Louÿs et H. de Régnier".
Old restorations
Portrait of Piere Louÿs and Henri de Régnier, canvas, signed, dated and annoted, with restorations
73,50 x 59,50 CM - 28,9 x 23,4 IN.
PROVENANCE
Always remained in the family of Pierre Louÿs by descent (in his story La Pêche aux souvenirs
-Flammarion - 1949), Jacques-Émile Blanche claims to have burnt this double portrait. Henri de Régnier had
refused to allow the painting to be exhibited: "the hatred of one of the brothers-in-law towards his elder brother [being] well known".
In the meantime, he had offered it and dedicated it to Pierre Louÿs, in whose family it has remained).
EXHIBITIONS
Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Jacques-Emile Blanche, peintre (1861-1942), 1997, n° 17, p. 90-91, reproduced in colour
Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Marie de Régnier, Muse et poète de la Belle Époque, 2004, p. 89, reproduced in colour
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Henry Frantz, "Jacques-Emile Blanche: portrait painter", The Studio, no. 129, vol. XXX, December 1903, p. 184 ;
Jane Roberts, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Gourcuff Gradenigo, Montreuil, 2012, p. 62 (reproduced);
Blanche catalogue raisonné online, by Jane Roberts, no. RM207.
A year after his famous Portrait of Marcel Proust, which became a veritable icon (Paris, Musée d'Orsay) and was exhibited at the Société nationale des Beaux-arts in 1892, Jacques-Emile Blanche once again painted a portrait of two famous writers, linked to the Parnassian aesthetic movement and decadent Symbolism. Note that Proust, like Louÿs in our painting, wears a comely moustache and a white orchid in his buttonhole. The poet and novelist Pierre Louÿs, then aged twenty-three, and Henri de Régnier, who was almost thirty, belonged to the same cosmopolitan circle of friends and intellectuals, many of whom had posed for Blanche. Blanche captured their two contrasting personalities in their poses. At the time, they were in love with the same woman, Marie, daughter of the poet José-Maria de Hérédia. Henri de Régnier married her in 1895, but she became Pierre Louÿs's mistress in 1897. Two years later, the rivals became brothers-in-law, since Louÿs married Louise de Heredia, Marie's younger sister.
The first, Pierre Louÿs, was still little known in 1893; he had been introduced to the artist two years earlier by André Gide. In 1896, he achieved fame with the publication of his novel Aphrodite. Henri de Régnier, an admirer of Mallarmé, Leconte de Lisle and Heredia, had already achieved success with his Poèmes anciens et romanesques (1889).
With her slightly Japanese framing, Blanche paints an unconventional portrait of her two slightly dandyish friends. Her silvery palette, with its contrasting black and white tones, was influenced by Degas and Whistler. In a living room decorated with indistinct paintings, they are seated in elegant, relaxed poses. Cross-legged, one faces the viewer on the sofa, the other in profile on a chair, occupying the diagonal of the composition. Pierre Louÿs, with a vague gaze and a hint of a smile, supports his bowed head with his left hand. Henri de Régnier, dryer and more imperious, holds his cigarette up to his monocle. We know of bust portraits of each of them, painted in the same years, in private collections (Roberts, online catalogue, op. cit. no. 1154 and no. 1367).
A portraitist of refined Parisian high society and gentry, and of artists, whether writers or musicians, Jacques-Emile Blanche has been rehabilitated in recent decades by several exhibitions (including one at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris in 2012), and the recent purchase of the Portrait of Georges Rodier by the Musée d'Orsay, placing him on a par with a Sargent or a Sorolla.
See original version (French)
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