Madeleine Lemaire

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Madeleine Lemaire, photograph by Nadar , 1891

Madeleine Jeanne Lemaire (* 1845 in Les Arcs-Sainte-Roseline in the Var département as Madeleine Jeanne Coll or Colle ; † April 8, 1928 in Paris ) was a French painter , graphic artist and salonnière . The artist created paintings in the style of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and is particularly known for her rose still life. In the run from her literary salon renowned nobles, politicians and artists wrong. Among them was the writer Marcel Proust , whose book Les plaisirs et les jours she illustrated and who chose her as a model for one of his characters in a novel.

Life

Career as a painter

Born in Les Arcs in the south of France, Madeleine Lemaire came to Paris in 1857 at the age of twelve, where she took lessons in the drawing school of Jeanne-Mathilde Herbelin (1820–1904) and Charles Chaplin . She made her debut in 1864 at the Salon de Paris and from then on exhibited her works here regularly, for which she received awards in 1877 and 1900. In addition, she exhibited her work in 1879 at the Société des Watercoloristes. She created pastels, watercolors, drawings and paintings that show landscapes and portraits as well as genre pieces in the academic style and based on the model of 18th century art. She was best known for her floral still lifes, with a particular focus on depicting roses. Robert de Montesquiou referred to her accordingly as "l'impératrice des roses" (Empress of the roses). She also illustrated books such as Les plaisirs et les jours by Marcel Proust and L'Abbé Constantin by Ludovic Halévy and poems by Robert de Montesquiou. Proust biographer George Painter identified her as the woman who served as one of the role models for the character of Madame Verdurin in his novel In Search of Lost Time . Her daughter Suzette Lemaire was Édouard Manet for two pictures. Madeleine Lemaire was inducted into the Legion of Honor in 1906 . In 2010, the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris showed thirty of her works as part of an exhibition on women painters in the time of Marcel Proust.

Madame Lemaire as host

Madeleine Lemaire was one of the most important hosts of the Belle Epoque . In her Parisian Hôtel particulier at 31 rue de Monceau she received nobles, politicians, artists and other well-known personalities of her time. From April to June of each year, she invited guests to her salon on Tuesdays , whereby it was less a question of lavishly furnished rooms and more of her in-house studio, in which the guests could examine her current pictures. In addition to the cultivated conversation, the artists present occasionally gave samples of their skills. Writers recited their works, the pianist Harold Bauer (1873–1951) or the composers Reynaldo Hahn , Camille Saint-Saëns and Jules Massenet played the piano and the ballerina Rosita Mauri danced in front of those present.

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot: Une chanson de Gibert dans le salon de madame Madeleine Lemaire , 1891, Musée d'Art et d'Industrie, Roubaix

Marcel Proust published the article Le salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire in the newspaper Le Figaro on May 11, 1903 under the pseudonym Dominique , in which he described the atmosphere of the salon and listed numerous guests. These included, for example, numerous nobles such as the Comtesse Greffulhe , the Comtesse Adhéaume de Chevigné , the Duchesse d'Uzès , Honoré d'Albert, Duc de Luynes and his wife nee. Simone de Crussol d'Uzès, the Comte Boniface de Castellane , the Baronne de Rothschild , the Comtesse de Pourtalès and the Comte d'Haussonville . Princess Mathilde Bonaparte , herself a painter, was one of Madeleine Lemaire's friends. In addition, there were politicians such as Raymond Poincaré , Paul Deschanel , Léon Bourgeois and Émile Loubet , the ambassadors of Italy, Germany and Russia and the military such as General Joseph Brugère .

The writers were particularly numerous among the guests. In addition to Proust, there are names such as Victorien Sardou , Guy de Maupassant , Paul Bourget , Robert de Montesquiou , Robert de Flers , Gaston Arman de Caillavet , Francis de Croisset (1877–1937), Jules Lemaître , Anatole France , Alexandre Dumas the Younger , François Coppée and Georges de Porto-Riche . There were also journalists such as Henri Rochefort , Alfred Mézières (1829–1915) and Gaston Calmette . Other guests were the actresses Rejane and Sarah Bernhardt as well as the actors Benoît Constant Coquelin , Jean Mounet-Sully and Lucien Guitry . The singers Emma Calvé , Gabrielle Krauss and Marie van Zandt as well as the singers Jean Bartet and Félix Mayol came from the opera . Last but not least, painters such as Jean-Louis Forain , Jean Béraud , Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , Jean Baptiste Édouard Detaille , Léon Bonnat , Antonio de la Gandara and Raimundo de Madrazo also honored the hostess. In his painting Une chanson de Gibert dans le salon de madame Madeleine Lemaire from 1891, the painter Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848–1934) recorded one of the meetings in the Salon Lemaire. The painting is in the collection of the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie in Roubaix .

In the summer months, Madeleine Lemaire received guests at the Château de Réveillon on the Marne or in a house in Dieppe on the English Channel, where they visited Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, for example.

Works in public collections (selection)

  • Fleurs dans un vase à deux anses , gouache, Louvre , Paris
  • Maître d'hôtel apportant une lettre sur un plateau , drawing, Musée du Louvre, Paris
  • Portrait de femme , drawing, Musée d'art d'archéologie et de sciences naturelles, Troyes
  • Still life , gouache, Musée Louis Senlecq, L'Isle-Adam
  • Choix d'œillets , watercolor, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
  • Pivoines , University of Dundee , Dundee

literature

Web links

Commons : Madeleine Lemaire  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Short biography at the Inventaire de Département des Arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre (French)
  • Biography at 19thcenturypaintings.com

Individual evidence

  1. Name at birth Coll and date and place of death according to AKL-Online, name at birth Colle and place of birth according to Inventaire de Département des Arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre. As an alternative to 1845, the AKL gives 28 May 1846 as the date of birth.
  2. André Germain: Les Clés de Proust. Editions Sun, Paris 1953.
  3. a b David R. Ellison: A Reader's Guide to Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-72006-9 , pp. 12 .
  4. ^ Claire Messud: La belle dame sans souci . In: The Guardian . 2006 ( theguardian.com ).
  5. Leah Rosenblatt Lehmbeck: Édouard Manet's portraits of women. Diss. New York 2007.
  6. a b André de Fouquières Becq: Mon Paris et mes Parisiens. II. Le quartier Monceau. Pierre Horay, Paris 1954.
  7. a b Félix de Rochegude: Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris. VIIIe arrondissement. Hachette, Paris 1910, p. 54 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  8. ^ Dominique (Marcel Proust): Le salon de Mme Madeleine Lemaire. In: Le Figaro. May 11, 1903.