Preliminary communication
The Problem of Authorship of the Portrait of Madame Récamier from the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters
Borivoj Popovčak
; Strossmayerova galerija starih majstora HAZU, Zagreb
Abstract
Madame Récamier, born as Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard on 3 December 1777 in Lyon, was definitely one of the most intriguing personalities of the first half of the 19th century in France. As the leading trend-setter in Paris in the age of the French Consulate and the Empire, her receptions gathered renowned artists, writers, actors and politicians of the period. Her exciting life, from luxurious soirées and the exile from Paris by the orders of Napoleon, to the refuge in the convent of Abbaye-aux-Bois, ended in 1849 after having succumbed to cholera. This beauty from Lyon was portrayed by numerous French and European artists, but her most important portraits were executed by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) and by painters from his studio. Several variants of her portrait were painted by François Gérard (1770–1837), while one portrait is attributed to David’s most devoted follower Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835). Gros’s Portrait of Madame Récamier was bequeathed to the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Yugoslav (now Croatian) Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1903 by the estate-owner from Vrbovec marquis de Piennes, along with ten other paintings. Although the painting in question was exhibited at the exhibition Portraits du Siècle at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1885, bearing the same title and attribution to Gros, the marquis referred to a different painting – executed by an unknown 19th-century painter and entitled Portrait of a Girl – as the portrait of Madame Récamier. Consequently, catalogues of the Strossmayer Gallery published between 1911 and 1926 list Gros’s painting as Portrait of an Unknown Young Lady in. In 1929 the Gallery was visited by Éduard Herriot (1872–1957), French politician, writer and the author of a biography of Juliette Récamier, who concluded that the Portrait of an Unknown Young Lady actually represents Madame Récamier, so Gallery catalogues published from 1932 to the present day list the painting under this title. French art historians were not unanimous as to the identity of the portrayed person and Gros’s authorship. The opinion that the painting represents Madame Récamier was eventually accepted, especially after the exhibition Juliette Récamier – Muse et mécene held in 2009 in Lyon; however, the authorship of the painting remained questionable. The present article offers a thorough analysis of these dilemmas and confronts newly found archival records to the published and unpublished photographic material, in an effort to create the preconditions for identifying Antoine-Jean Gros as the author of the Portrait of Madame Récamier from the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Keywords
Juliette Récamier; portrait; Jacques-Louis David; Antoine-Jean Gros; Marquis de Piennes; Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters
Hrčak ID:
136374
URI
Publication date:
17.3.2015.
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