Madame Suggia
| Madame Suggia |
|---|
| Augustus John , 1920-23 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 215.5 x 193.5 cm |
| Tate Gallery
Link to the picture |
Madame Suggia is a painting by the British impressionist Augustus John from 1920 to 1923 that belongs to the holdings of the Tate Gallery in London.
Description and history
The life-size painting shows the Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia with her instrument, the Stradivari cello "Bonamy Dobree-Suggia" from 1717 , which was named after her. The work was originally a commission for Suggia's fiancé Edward Hudson, which John completed after the engagement was broken up the work, however, independently without payment. John worked three years to complete it, and Suggia was his model in over eighty sessions lasting several hours. The image is considered to be one of the artist's best portraits due to the size and the coordination of appearance and color. Although there have been a number of indications of an intimate relationship, this has always been denied by the painter and model.
The Suggia is shown in front of a lavishly draped brown curtain in a voluminous red dress with expressively raised folds, under which her shod foot can be seen; she is holding the cello between her legs. Her playing arm is fully extended, her head thrown back slightly to the right, while she plays the shiny, polished instrument. In this way, the work captures the dynamics of musical expression and the emotionality of Suggia while playing. In the biography Pablo Casals published in 1962, the author Juan Alavedra suspects that the portrait of John could be influenced by Jean-Marc Nattier's (1685–1766) painting Henriette of France playing bass violin , which John saw in Versailles when he was there in 1919 the Versailles peace conference attended, where he portrayed a number of delegates.
The portrait shaped the public perception of Suggia, and many concert-goers knew the picture or its description before they had ever heard the musician. Later Suggia was often characterized as the "subject of the famous portrait by Augustus John".
After a sensational exhibition at the Alpine Club, in which the Infanta of Spain and other representatives of the European nobility took part, the painting was purchased for the immense sum of 5000 pounds by William P. Clyde, Jr., the owner of the Clyde Steamship Company, who showed it in numerous exhibitions in the USA. It has been on display at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Cleveland Museum of Art , Cleveland, Ohio, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among others. In Pittsburgh it was able to prevail against a painting by André Derain and won the first prize endowed with $ 1500 at the 1924 International Exhibition . The English admirers of Guilhermina Suggia found the loss of this “national treasure” painful. The art dealer Joseph Duveen therefore bought the picture back in 1925 for an unknown sum and donated it to the Tate Gallery in London , where it has been on display ever since.
literature
- Anita Mercier: Guilhermina Suggia: Cellist . Ashgate Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7546-6169-6 , pp. 53 ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Madame Suggia , Tate Gallery London
- ↑ Anita Mercier: Guilhermina Suggia: Cellist . Ashgate Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7546-6169-6 , p. 54
- ^ Joan Alavedra, Pablo Casals, Plaza y Janes, Barcelona, 1963
- ↑ GUILHERMINA SUGGIA (Chapter La Suggia ), Anita Mercier, Juillard Institute
- ↑ Purchasing power of 5000 pounds sterling in 1923