When in 1896 Burne-Jones exhibited his portrait of the Baronne Deslandes (fig. 31), an Egeria of the Aesthetes and a fervent admirer of the artist, 38 it was given a very cool recep- tion. This is clearly not one of his better portraits, but one iconographic detail is notable: in the sitters hands the artist placed a crystal ball, alluding to the iconography of his 1865 watercolour Astrologia (private collection) and introducing a major Symbolist theme, the mirror. 39
Baronne Madeleine Deslandes (1866–1929) was an accomplished novelist who moved in literary and artistic circles in Paris. Numerous members of the Symbolist movement respected her writing, many of whom also admired Edward Burne-Jones. She was hostess of a busy salon that attracted artists, poets and composers, including Tissot, Edmond de Goncourt, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Barrès and Oscar Wilde. On 7 May 1893 the Baronne Deslandes published in Le Figaro (under her literary pseudonym Ossit) the first article to be entirely devoted to Burne-Jones in a French newspaper. In order to prepare this article, she travelled to England in March 1893 to interview the artist. She wrote back to Maurice Barrès that Burne-Jones had been ‘thunderstruck’ by meeting her, and that his enthusiasm was such that that ‘he wants to do a portrait of me — which apparently is something I should be very proud of, as he has an absolute horror of making portraits’ (Fonds Barrès, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris). Despite this claim, Burne-Jones scholars are agreed that the Baronne herself probably lobbied the artist to undertake her portrait. The Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895–96, makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the creative dialogue that developed between Burne-Jones and French and Belgian Symbolist milieus in the last decade of the artist’s life when he exhibited at the Universal Exhibitions of 1878 and 1879 in Paris. Gustave Moreau made contact with Burne-Jones, as did Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who wrote to the English artist in 1891, asking him to send his famous Wheel of fortune (a version of which is held in the NGV’s collections) to the exhibition of the Société nationale des beaux-arts. The Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes was the last painting Burne-Jones exhibited in Paris in his lifetime, and his only contribution to the 1896 Salon du Champ-de-Mars. In this sublime portrait Burne-Jones has painted the Baronne Madeleine Deslandes in a blue dress, recalling the similarly clad figures in her favourite paintings from the artist’s celebrated Briar rose series. The Baronne perceived herself as something of a visionary and Burne-Jones has made reference to this self-awareness by placing a laurel tree (a traditional emblem of prophecy) behind her and a crystal ball on her lap. This may also account for the formal qualities of this work — the rather rigid pose of the sitter and her very serious, inwardly reflective and sensitive facial expression. A portrait of this calibre adds a highly significant new dimension to the Pre-Raphaelite collection, as well as deepening the Gallery’s holdings by Burne-Jones, which include eleven drawings and two major subject paintings, The garden of Pan and The wheel of fortune.
Artistic souls: Edward Burne-Jones and his portrait of Baronne Deslandes The celebrated nineteenth-century British artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) is well represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Notable works that demonstrate his wide-ranging talents include two major subject paintings, The Wheel of Fortune, 1871–85, and The garden of Pan, 1886–87, as well as a coloured embroidery, Poesis, 1880, and a stained-glass window depicting St Paul, designed 1892, manufactured 1911, both made after designs by the artist. Another key work in the collection is Burne-Jones’s portrait Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895–96 (fig. 1), which was acquired by the NGV in late 2005 through the support of generous donor Andrew Sisson. In this work of art, rendered using a steely blue-green colour palette, the sitter is shown in three-quarter length and seated so that her body faces the viewer, while her large, dark, heavy-lidded eyes gaze to the left. A crystal globe is placed in the sitter’s lap and held by her delicately entwined fingers, while behind her there seems to be a balcony draped with fabric and branches of laurel leaves set against a backdrop of curtains. One of few portraits by Burne-Jones, this work reflects the artist’s singular view of portraiture in his search for an ideal female beauty. While ostensibly conforming to the mild-eyed, contemplative type often depicted by the artist, the female sitter was, by contemporary accounts, a flamboyant character. This painting offers a unique realisation of portraiture with an intriguing narrative surrounding the commission and the life of the sitter. Edward Burne-Jones and his view of portraiture Contemporary critics characterised Burne-Jones’s portraiture as depicting his own perception of beauty rather than capturing a sitter’s likeness. In 1894 The Times asserted that the portraits by this artist ‘do not show his sitters as the world sees them, but as he sees them, and to find portraiture in them one has to see as much as possible with his eyes’.1 As Associate Professor Alison Inglis, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, has noted, even though the famous actress Lillie Langtry served as the model for Fortuna in The Wheel of Fortune (fig. 2), of which a number of versions exist, it is admittedly difficult to discern any clear likeness to Langtry in the shadowed features of the goddess.2While this depiction was not intended as a portrait, it is insightful to note that despite the opportunity to capture Langtry’s well-known, robust appearance, Burne-Jones returned to the depiction of his own ideal type. His sitters were typically shown with an enigmatic gaze, which reflected his belief that external appearances are incapable of portraying the inner qualities of a person.3 In 1877 Henry James highlighted this repetition, aptly noting Burne-Jones’s figures ‘conform to this languishing type with a strictness which savours of monotony’.4As asserted by a contemporary critic for The Architect and Contract Reporter, the perception at the time was that regardless of appearance to reality, Burne-Jones ‘sets before us his ideals of beauty’.5 A distinctive approach to portraiture is evident in the art of Burne-Jones through the similarities his depiction of the baronne shares with his other well-known portraits. One such example is the oil on canvas portrait of the artist’s wife, Georgiana Burne-Jones (fig. 3), who is depicted in a black dress, staring out at the viewer, with her children Philip and Margaret in the background.6Contemporary reviews of Burne-Jones’s women as ‘melancholy’, ‘pensive’ and ‘mild-eyed’ are applicable to both paintings.7 Each sitter can be described as appearing introspective in a manner that conformed to the artist’s desired model. The inclusion of symbolic items in each portrait is another notable similarity between the works. His wife is shown holding a herbal book open at an illustration of a pansy or heartsease, an actual specimen of which rests on the page. This flower symbolises undying love thus reflecting the sitter’s loyalty to her husband.8 In a similar fashion, laurel leaves and a crystal ball act as symbolic accessories in the portrait of the baronne, albeit with different connotations, to be discussed. As a critic for The Builder wrote in 1898, the women depicted by this artist ‘have many different names, different draperies and different accessories, but they are all the same woman’.9 This analysis argues, however, that Burne-Jones was attuned to representing the individuality of his sitters, such as Madeleine Deslandes, through a more subtle distinction between his ideals of beauty and likeness in reality. The baronne’s portrait Burne-Jones primarily painted only family members and close friends, as these sitters shared interests and sensibilities that conformed to his personal style. The circumstances surrounding the commission of the baronne’s portrait are therefore intriguing, as Deslandes was a foreigner to England with no prior ties to the artist. Baronne Deslandes was an accomplished writer, and on 7 May 1893, under her literary pseudonym ‘Ossit’, she published in Le Figaro an article entirely devoted to the work of Edward Burne-Jones. In undertaking the research for this article in March 1893, she had travelled to England to interview the artist.10 According to a letter Deslandes wrote to Maurice Barrès, a French writer and politician, it was ‘love at first sight’ for Burne-Jones and he enthusiastically offered to paint her portrait.11 Indeed, an article in the New York Daily Tribune on 3 August 1908 claimed that ‘among her most fervent admirers was the late Sir Edward Burne-Jones’.12 This reported admiration could be seen to support the contention that the artist had eagerly volunteered to paint the baronne. Modern scholars such as Philippe Saunier, Stephen Wildman and John Christian have argued, however, that in light of Burne-Jones’s known preference for depicting family and friends, it is more likely that Deslandes lobbied the artist to undertake her commission.13Little is known of the painting ’s progress, and there is no record of how many sittings were involved.14 On 12 December 1895, Burne-Jones’s assistant T. M. Rooke noted that the artist was working on the dress and background, and it is therefore possible that work on the portrait had not commenced until that year.15 Within months, the painting was on display to the crowds of people who attended the 1896 Paris Salon at the Champ de Mars. The NGV’s 2007 acquisition of a preliminary drawing (fig. 4) by Burne-Jones for Deslandes’s portrait enables one to trace the journey from the artist’s initial concept to the finished painting. The drawing was presumably sketched at an early sitting to establish the pose, which essentially remains unchanged. One notable contrast to the finished portrait is the absence of the laurel leaves and the globe. The baronne’s garment also lacks the bows present in the painting and it forms a tighter fit around the sitter’s waist, which translates into a stiff pose. Rather than allowing her arms to rest against her sides, Deslandes holds them away from her body, with her hands placed forward on her lap, heightening the reading of a tense, formal posture. The baronne’s impassive gaze to the viewer’s left is echoed in the finished painting, indicating a degree of consistency in Burne-Jones’s portrayal of this famous French sitter. Adding to the interest in this drawing is the artist’s inscription in the top right corner, which reads ‘wildly jolly/x’. Offering a hint of his well-known self-deprecating wit, the text seems to provide an ironic contrast to the statuesque pose of the sitter, which was characteristic of Burne-Jones’s depiction of women. It is therefore unlikely that the inscription was meant to be critical of Deslandes for appearing still and impassive. Rather, these words provide greater insight into the relationship between the artist and the sitter, implying that the baronne’s manner during her sitting prompted comment by the artist, whether to be read as a literal observation or an ironic joke. Madeleine Deslandes Perceiving Madeleine Deslandes’s outgoing and artistic character from Burne-Jones’s painted portrayal requires bold imagination on the part of the viewer, as the portrait is subdued and enigmatic. This woman was a French celebrity of the day, and although her significance and notoriety were subjects of a key article by Philippe Saunier in the Revue de L’Art in 1999, she has been largely overlooked in modern English-speaking art history. Madeleine Annette Edmé Angélique Vivier-Deslandes was born in Montluçon, France, on 16 April 1866 to a family of prominent social standing, with her father bearing the title of baron.16 As a writer, she began publishing a series of novels under her pseudonym Ossit in 1892.17 Eight years earlier, at the age of eighteen, in September 1884, she had married the aristocratic historian and journalist le Comte Fleury and they had a son the following year, although little is known of the child and the marriage was annulled in 1894.18 Her second marriage years later to Prince Robert de Broglie in November 1901 lasted only four months before ending in divorce.19 Despite her private troubles, Deslandes pursued a glittering social life in Parisian literary and artistic circles. She was celebrated as a hostess of a cultured salon that attracted the presence of renowned artists, poets and composers. Among the famous attendees were James Tissot, Jean Lorrain, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Maurice Barrès and Oscar Wilde.20 Indeed, the modern writer Philippe Jullian described how even a famous figure like Wilde brought Deslandes armfuls of lilies and was often to be found in respectful admiration at her feet. Deslandes was evidently a key member of what Barrès then termed ‘the little class’, meaning the select circle of cultured and aristocratic individuals in the upper echelons of Parisian society.21 Madeleine Deslandes became the subject of public interest and was discussed in several newspapers; her fame even extended beyond Europe to distant countries like Australia. In The Sydney Morning Herald in 1895, Deslandes, referred to by her nom de plume Ossit, was described as ‘a young new authoress, who, by her last book especially, “Ilse”, has made a quite separate place for herself’.22 The baronne also acquired a reputation in the United States; in 1906, for example, The New York Times provided a detailed description of Deslandes for its readers. She was portrayed as ‘a lady of great gifts and charming manners’, deserving praise for her literary talents. At the same time, her reported ‘capricious’ character and ‘temper’ were offered as an explanation for her divorce from Robert de Broglie.23 Furthermore, two years later an article about Deslandes appeared in a 1908 edition of the New York Daily Tribune. The columnist, the Marquise de Fontenoy, first mentioned the baronne’s two failed marriages then emphasised that ‘her salon has become the rendezvous of much that is witty and brilliant in the literary and artistic world’.24 Evidently Madeleine Deslandes’s public and private lives were deemed worthy of constant scrutiny and remark. Picturing Deslandes The baronne cultivated her fame by commissioning artists to depict her image. Hippolyte Buffenoir, who wrote a twenty-page pamphlet about the baronne in Paris in November 1894, noted that numerous leading artists had reproduced her image; in addition to Burne-Jones, they included Paul César Helleu and Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel.25 The portraits of Deslandes by these two artists convey an atmosphere that is both glamorous and fashionable. Helleu’s narrow, vertical pastel portrait of c. 1891, titled La comtesse Fleury, as she was married to le Comte Fleury at the time (fig. 5), and Portrait de la baronne Deslandes, c. 1894, by Boutet de Monvel (fig. 6), similarly present Deslandes dressed in chic, stylish clothing while gazing out at the viewer in an alluring, self-assured manner. Set in bare interiors, these paintings refrain from any detail that would distract from her image.26 Since the sitter commissioned these works of art, they allow one to gauge her artistic sensibility and her desire to participate in the fashioning of her public persona through portraiture. Photography was another medium Deslandes employed in order to shape her self-image. For instance, she appears in a collection of photographs acquired by the famous fin-de-siècle writer and aesthete Count Robert de Montesquiou.27 In one distinctive example (fig. 7), Deslandes is shown dressed in an eccentric costume with flowing material resembling the wings of a bat, which she displays with her outstretched arms as she tilts her head to one side, while her raised eyebrow assertively engages the viewer. A hairpiece in the style of a winged creature appears perched atop her curls, while a frilled collar, held in place by a black band, circles the back of her neck. In a further enhancement to the theme, there seems to be a bat-like silhouette attached to the bust of her tight bodice. Montesquiou may have suggested the bat motif for this image, as it inspired both the decor of his apartment on the Quai d’Orsay and the title of his book of poetry, Les chauvesouris (1892).28 By means of costume, accessories and her dramatic pose, this staged photograph presents Deslandes as a decided individual who is confident, stylish and creative. Deslandes’s participation in posed self-images can be compared to the determined self-promotion of her contemporary, the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. In a similar fashion to Deslandes, Bernhardt was an expert in the creation and control of her celebrity status, commissioning numerous painters, photographers and sculptors to represent her likeness.29 Interestingly, Bernhardt also incorporated the bat motif in some of her self-consciously composed images by wearing a ‘bat hat’ that was possibly inspired by her friendship with Montesquiou.30 A significant example of Bernhardt ’s constructed self-images is the Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, 1876, by Georges Jules Victor Clairin.31 Dressed in white, Bernhardt lounges on a deep-red velvet divan with a slender wolfhound at her feet. The work emphasises the actress’s unmistakably thin physique, her chic yet racy corsetless gown, as well as her passionate love for wild animals, feathers and fur.32 Deslandes similarly shared a desire for the promotion of her fame and reputation through visual imagery, as evidenced by her portraits and photographs. Consequently, she can be seen to fit the contemporary mould of a female celebrity in high society or the dramatic arts, utilising self-images in order to achieve her desire for widespread recognition. Perception versus reality Burne-Jones’s portrait of Deslandes is remarkable for its visual contradiction of her reputation as a flamboyant character. According to the contemporary critic for L’Art Moderne in May 1896, ‘the portrait is of an impassivity in contradiction with the nature of the model’.33 In the painting, Deslandes appears mild-eyed and pensive, and yet this introspective figure corresponded to the colourful woman who, as recorded by Count Robert de Montesquiou, would gesture her arms ‘widely like wings heavy with rain’ and who once decided to appear in a cage with lions during a Castellan fête.34 Deslandes played up the contrast between the portrait’s grave, formal mood and her own quirky, ostentatious character by majestically lying on a precious carpet beneath the painting when she received guests, while playfully pretending to feed jewels to a bronze ornament of a toad.35 The baronne’s artistic eccentricity was further reflected throughout her apartment, which was lavishly furnished with an array of bizarre, expensive ornaments, including a full-size bronze unicorn.36 While the still, solemn mood of Burne-Jones’s portrayal contradicts Deslandes’s charismatic persona, the portrait symbolically reflects the creative and mystical imagination of this multifaceted individual. Under her pseudonym Ossit, the baronne demonstrated her prowess in the art of literature. According to The New York Times in 1906, Madeleine Deslandes’s ‘literary talents were of a high order, and she wrote many a fascinating story’.37 It is therefore probable that Burne-Jones included the laurel branches, with their well-established tradition of representing literary talent,38 as a gracious acknowledgement of Deslandes’s reputation as a gifted writer. This interpretation may be supported by the artist’s earlier portrait of the American woman Caroline Fitzgerald (fig. 8). Aged sixteen, Fitzgerald is depicted holding an open book and seated in front of what appears to be a fabric-draped balcony or structure and branches of laurel leaves. The formula of depicting a sitter in front of a background featuring drapery and foliage is therefore not unique in Burne-Jones’s oeuvre. On the occasion of this sitter’s engagement to Lord Edward George Fitzmaurice in 1889, The Daily Picayune noted, ‘she has published several volumes of poems, is a thorough classical scholar and is a member of the American Ornamental Society’.39 The shared presence of laurel in the portraits of these two women, both noted for their skill in the written word, suggests its role in symbolising their literary talents in the same manner that the book Fitzgerald holds in her hands reflects her reputation as ‘something of a bookworm’.40 Together with my thological works such as The Wheel of Fortune, in which the poet is identified by a crown of laurel leaves, the portraits by Burne-Jones share in a visual language of symbolic accessories that speak to the character of the figures depicted. Contemporary critics also considered the crystal sphere in the baronne’s portrait to be representative of the sitter’s character. Hippolyte Buffenoir contended that the sphere was ‘most of all a sign of the universe as it obviously appears to this young woman who has written the book Ilse and only wants to accept from life the reflections that can be held in a crystal ball’.41 Buffenoir therefore suggested that the globe was a sign of Deslandes’s view of reality in terms of ‘beauty and generosity’, where everything that touches her ‘is pure and delicate’.42 Similarly, in June 1894 the French newspaper Le Gaulois described the globe in the baronne’s portrait as reflecting the world ‘infinitely pure, idealised, detached from all appearance of impurity’.43 In this dream world Deslandes was to be a ‘little queen of Celtic fairies’.44 Furthermore, in the New York Daily Tribune, de Fontenoy commented that Deslandes was depicted ‘as one of the Muses, holding in her hand a globe of pure crystal’.45 Such reports from contemporary critics attest to the public perception of the baronne as a wistful, creative woman who was preoccupied by thoughts of an otherworldly ‘fairyland’, reflected in both her writing and her role in inspiring painters and poets. This pensive, wistful side to the baronne’s character complemented her still, reserved appearance in the portrayal by Burne-Jones. Deslandes’s introspective demeanour in Burne-Jones’s painting is but one example of the multiple personas she self-consciously acted out in public. In another instance, a writer for The New York Times in 1895 reported meeting Deslandes, who was dressed in a ‘short, thick robe of sealskin, the throat cut out low and studded with turquoises … with a coronet of Autumn leaves forming a mysterious bonnet’. The critic summarised her appearance as resembling ‘a woodland fairy’.46 Such a characterisation is not surprising when also considering a print (fig. 9), a copy of which is held by the NGV, in which Deslandes is depicted standing profile in a full-length, sleeveless dress with a train, pensively gazing at a flower blossoming from a vase. Accompanying this image is a brief passage, handwritten and signed by the subject herself. In a fanciful fashion she wrote: We all know that dwarves are shoemakers to fairies but what we did not know is that when they are overworked on long summer nights they drink Vin Marianiwine because this delicious beverage is made in fairyland. – Ossit47 The image and text elicit thoughts of the dreamy, otherworldly woman who had acquired a reputation as ‘une fée préraphaélite’.48 Alternatively, when she was not in ‘fairyland’, she was ‘the queen of purple and mauve bats and of the soft little singing toads’, as stated by André Germain in his book Portraits Parisiens(1918).49 This characterisation of the baronne is supported by the photograph of her wearing a bat-inspired costume, as well as her ‘pet’ toad sculpture. Madeleine Deslandes was a flamboyant and notable society figure ready to adopt different personas. She was therefore suitably inclined to play the spiritual, pensive individual in the portrait by Burne-Jones, whose work she admired for its ‘delicate and troubling’ beauty.50 Edward Burne-Jones represented the baronne according to his own defined artistic vision. Paradoxically, the mysterious and solitary sitter proved to be an outgoing, flamboyant individual with an international reputation. The colourful Madeleine Deslandes was also suited to the subdued ‘fairyland’ depicted by Burne-Jones, which reflected her own creativity and mystical imagination. The portrait by this renowned British artist was another string in Deslandes’s impressive bow, aimed at cultivating her fame. Taken together, the painting speaks of Burne-Jones’s idealised view of portraiture, Deslandes’s desire for public recognition, her eccentric role-playing and what the French newspaper Le Gaulois described in 1894 as the ‘spiritual affinities’ shared between these two artistic souls.51 Emily Wubben, Exhibitions Research Officer, Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, and recipient of the 2015 Ursula Hoff Fellowship (in 2015) Notes 1 The Times, 28 April 1894, p. 10. 2 See Alison Inglis, ‘Deathless beauty: Poynter’s Helen, Lillie Langtry and high Victorian ideals of beauty’, in Angus Trumble et al., Love and Death: Art in the Age of Queen Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2001, p. 82. 3 Refer to comments by the artist recorded in Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. 2, Lund Humphries, London, 1993, pp. 140–1 (first published in 1904 by Macmillan and Co. Ltd). Further discussion surrounding Edward Burne-Jones’s perspective on portraiture can be found in Martin Harrison & Bill Waters, Burne-Jones, Putnam, New York, 1973, p. 129. 4 Henry James, ‘The picture season in London, 1877’, first published in Galaxy, Aug. 1877 and reprinted in John L. Sweeney (ed.), The Painter’s Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts by Henry James, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1956, p. 146. 5 The Architect and Contract Reporter, 11 Nov. 1898, p. 316. 6 Edward Burne-Jones commenced this portrait in 1883 and reworked the painting on several occasions. According to the sitter, Georgiana Burne-Jones, he worked on it ‘for years at intervals, but never finished [it] to satisfy himself ’ (Burne-Jones, p. 134). 7 Daily News, 25 April 1896, p. 6; The Times, 9 May 1888, p. 10; Claude Phillips, ‘Edward Burne-Jones’, The Magazine of Art, vol. 8, 1885, p. 288. 8 See Stephen Wildman & John Christian et al., Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998, p. 260 (cat. 116). 9 The Builder, 25 June 1898, p. 603. 10 See Philippe Saunier, ‘Edward Burne-Jones et la France: Madeleine Deslandes, Une Préraphaélite Oubliée’, Revue de L’Art, no. 123, 1999, p. 60; and Gabriel Naughton, ‘Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes’, in Christie’s: Important British and Irish Art, auction catalogue, 23 Nov. 2005, Christie’s, London, 2005, p. 77. 11 The following is the original French text cited by Philippe Saunier. ‘Coup de foudre … pour lui … Son enthousiasme va même jusqu’à vouloir faire un portrait de moi – ce qui paraît-il est une chose dont je devrais être fière, car il a horreur de faire des portraits’ (Saunier, p. 60). I wish to thank Catherine Cardinet and Roberta Crisci for their generous assistance in translating the French sources cited in this article. 12 Marquise de Fontenoy, ‘Ossit’, New York Daily Tribune, 3 Aug. 1908, p. 5. 13 See Saunier, p. 60, and Wildman & Christian, p. 318. 14 See Naughton, p. 77. 15 See Mary Lago (ed.), Burne-Jones Talking: His Conversations 1895–1898 Preserved by His Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke, John Murray, London, 1982, p. 65. 16 Naughton, p. 76. 17 Her first novel, which was published by Alphonse Lemettre in 1892, was titled A quoi bon? (What’s the use? ). It was a resounding success for the new author, being sold in seven editions and receiving notable praise from the critics. One contemporary, Hippolyte Buffenoir, recounted the novel’s ‘delightful landscapes of Egypt, scenes of passion and melancholy treated with inexhaustible charm’, further suggesting ‘that the fine pen that has written it is saturated with tears’. See Hippolyte Buffenoir, Les Salons de Paris, Grandes Dames Contemporaines: La Baronne Deslandes (Ossit), Librairie du ‘Mirabeau’, Paris, 1895, p. 7. 18 Comte Fleury’s full name was Maurice Napoléon Emile (see Naughton, p. 76). The New York Times stated in 1902 that the marriage had been annulled ecclesiastically and civilly at the request of Madeleine Deslandes (see The New York Times, 14 March 1902, p. 9). 19 Naughton, p. 77. According to The New York Times in 1906, while a civil divorce had been attained following the efforts of de Broglie’s father, Prince Amédée, ‘a religious divorce, unfortunately, was impossible’ (see The New York Times, part four, second magazine section, 2 Dec. 1906, p. 8). 20 Naughton, p. 77. 21 Philippe Jullian, Prince of Aesthetes: Count Robert de Montesquiou 1855–1921, trans. John Haylock & Francis King, Viking, New York, 1968, pp. 67, 98, 109. 22 The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 1895, p. 7. 23 The New York Times, part four, second magazine section, 2 Dec. 1906, p. 8. 24 De Fontenoy, p. 5. While Frederick Cunliffe-Owen was a member of the editorial staff of the New York Daily Tribune and was known to use the pseudonym ‘Marquis de Fontenoy’, the female title of ‘Marquise’ points to his wife Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, who was also a noted writer (see James Howard Gore, American Legionnaires of France: A Directory of the Citizens of the United States of whom France has conferred her National Order, the Legion of Honour, W. F. Roberts Co., Washington, DC, 1920, pp. 113–14). 25 Buffenoir, p. 10. Buffenoir wrote a series of thirteen pamphlets about society women, titled ‘Grandes Dames Contemporaines’, with the pamphlet on the baronne being printed in 1895. 26 The painting by Boutet de Monvel was shown at the 1894 Champ de Mars, two years prior to the exhibition of the portrait by Edward Burne-Jones. Saunier reported this painting as missing in his 1999 article, which included a reproduced image of the work taken from the catalogue illustrating the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts of 1894 (see Saunier, p. 61). 27 These photographs are held in the Bibliothèque Nationale, France. See Saunier, pp. 57, 69. 28 See Janis Bergman-Carton, ‘“A vision of a stained glass Sarah”: Bernhardt and the decorative arts’, in Carol Ockman et al., Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama, Jewish Museum and Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2005, pp. 200–1, n. 19. 29 See Meri Llawen Machin-Roberts, ‘Dramatic publicity: portraiture as creative collaboration: Sarah Bernhardt, Nellie Melba and Bertram Mackennal’, MA thesis, University of Melbourne, 2004, pp. 2, 67. 30 Bergman-Carton, pp. 116, 200–1, n. 19. 31 This portrait of Bernhardt was placed on display at the 1876 Salon, where it received both positive and negative reviews. See Heather McPherson, The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth-Century France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 109. 32 See Carol Ockman, ‘Was she magnificent? Sarah Bernhardt’s reach’, in Ockman et al., pp. 28–9. 33 ‘Le portrait est d’une impassibilité en contradiction avec la nature du modèle’. See L’Art Moderne, 3 May 1896, p. 140. 34 Count Robert de Montesquiou quoted in Jullian, pp. 67, 235. 35 Jullian, p. 67. 36 Noted by Albert Flament, quoted in Saunier, p. 62. 37 The New York Times, part four, second magazine section, 2 Dec. 1906, p. 8. 38 For a discussion of the historical connotations of laurel, see J. B. Trapp, ‘The owl’s ivy and the poet’s bays: an enquiry into poetic garlands’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 21, no. 3, 1958, pp. 227–55; Irma B. Jaffe, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets, Fordham University Press, New York, 2002, p. 223; and James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 2nd edn, Westview Press, Boulder, 2008, p. 196. 39 The Daily Picayune, 17 July 1889, p. 4. 40 The Milwaukee Sentinel, 1 Sep. 1889, p. 9. 41 ‘Mais c’est surtout le signe de l’univers tel qu’il apparaît évidemment à la jeune femme qui a écrit Ilse, et qui de la vie ne veut admettre que les reflets qui peuvent tenir dans une boule de cristal’ (see Buffenoir, p. 13). Buffenoir described the novel Ilse as having ‘all the charm of a fairy-tale’, in which ‘the theme is light, like the scent of wild carnations that flower on old walls’. The main character of the story, Ilse, is a young, naive girl, aged seventeen, who has grown up protected from the world. She meets a handsome man at the festivals at Bayreuth, who at first plans to take advantage of her naivety. In the end, he refrains from ‘the vile act’, instead taking pity on her, and merely kisses her hand. Ilse is left to wallow in the ‘beautiful heavenly dream’ in which ‘her heart was aroused’, and sadly chooses to end her longing by seeking the ‘peace of the dead’ (see Buffenoir, pp. 15–6). 42 ‘L’univers, pour elle, est fait de beauté et de bonté; elle n’y distingue rien que d’épuré et de délicat, sous tout ce qui la touché’ (ibid., p. 13). 43 ‘Infiniment pur, idéalisé, dégagé de toute apparence de souillure’ (Le Gaulois, 14 June 1894, p. 1). 44 ‘Une petite reine de féeries celtiques’(ibid.). 45 de Fontenoy, p. 5. 46 The New York Times, 9 Aug. 1895, p. 6. 47 Vin Mariani was created in the 1860s by Angelo Mariani, a French chemist, and was marketed as a ‘tonic wine’. Each fluid ounce contained 6 milligrams of cocaine. See Howard Markel, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine, Pantheon Books, New York, pp. 54–8. 48 Saunier, p. 58. ‘Une fée préraphaélite’ describes a Pre-Raphaelite fairy. 49 ‘La reine des chauves-souris mauves et des doux petits crapauds chanteurs’ (André Germain, Portraits Parisiens, G. Crés, Paris, 1918, p. 95). 50 Ossit, ‘Edward Burne-Jones’, Le Figaro, 7 May 1893, p. 1. 51 ‘Affinités spirituelles’ (see Le Gaulois, 14 June 1894, p. 1).
This arresting and enigmatic portrait is a document of crucial importance for the history of the relationship between British and French art in the late nineteenth century. Its true significance has only been recognized in recent times. Although it is mentioned in the artist's autograph work-record in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the reference is brief and the record remains unpublished; nor does the painting feature in any of the older literature on which Burne-Jones scholarship is based, namely his widows Memorials (1904) and the monographs by Malcom Bell (in the fourth edition, 1898) and Fortunee de Lisle (1904). Another reason for its long obscurity is that it was apparently never photographed by Frederick Hollyer, the Kensington photographer whose reproductions of Burne-Jones's work often gave them their contemporary currency, and are still in some cases our only means of knowing of their existence and appearance. As soon as it was finished in December 1895 or early in 1896, the portrait was evidently taken to France, where it was exhibited at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars that spring. It then disappeared into the sitter's collection. Although the picture was included in two exhibitions in Paris in the 1930s, it does not seem to have received much critical attention until 1959, when it was discussed by Jacques Letheve in his pioneering article on late nineteenth-century interest in Pre-Raphaelitism in France. However, since the article appeared in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, it was not well known in England, while the picture itself had once again disappeared from view. Meanwhile, the whole question of the crossover between English and French Symbolism was only slowly gaining recognition, unlike its "impressionist" counterpart, a subject that had always been better documented and not had to contend with the vagaries of fashion. While interest in Burne-Jones was undergoing a dramatic revival, this aspect of the story was still relatively opaque. When Martin Harrison and Bill Water published their landmark monograph in 1973, the Baronne Deslandes portrait received no mention. This began to change in 1975, when Penelope Fitzgerald produced her biography of Burne-Jones. Then, indeed, the portrait's execution received the colourful treatment with which the novelist so often enlivens her narrative. By 1983, moreover, the picture itself had emerged from obscurity and appeared at Agnew's. in fact by now the whole subject of Burne-Jones's reputation in France in the 1890s was becoming much better understood, and the picture's importance within this context was once again recognized. Ever since Claude Allemand-Cosnean discussed it in the catalogue of the exhibition of Burne-Jones's drawings in the Fitzwilliam Museum that was mounted by the Museum at Nantes in 1992, it has been the subject of lively attention, finally featuring prominently in Phllippe Saunier's article on Burne-Jones and Madeleine Deslandes, "a forgotten Pre-Raphaelite", that appeared in Revue de l'Art in 1999. The very title of this article reflects the keen awareness that now exists of the international nature of Symbolism, and of Burne-Jones's central place in this pan-European movement. the picture only needs to find a home in a collection that celebrates this phenomenon. Burne-Jones was a reluctant portraitist. The fame he had achieved since 1877, when his work had caused such a sensation at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, had brought him a number of commissions, but it was an art form he hardly relished. Not everyone understood his claim that portraiture should be "the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental". there was also the problem of reconciling the demands of likeness with his own very clearly perceived aesthetic ideal. "i do not easily get portraiture" he wrote, " and the perpetual hunt to find in a face what I like, and leave out what mislikes me, is a bad school for it". Not surprisingly, he was often at his bet with sitters he knew well, particularly his own family, or those who conformed to his pictorial vision, namely children and young girls. he could also be successful with older sitters, in whom "character and moral quality" were more readily discerned. Examples are his drawings of the elderly William Graham, made not long before his patron died in 1885 and of Catherine Ralli, the subject of a superb study dated 1892, when the sitter was in her seventies, that was sold in these Rooms on 9 June 2004, lot 18. But it was not always possible to avoid demands for a portrait from some outsider, especially when the would-be subject was an admirer and devotee, hooked on values that Burne-Jones himself had in part created. One such portrait was the extraordinary full-length of lady Windsor, a prominent "Soul", that he painted in 1893-5 (private collection0. On the one hand his nearest approach to a society portrait, meeting Watts and even Sargent on their own ground, it is also so austere in colour and form that it can only be read as a reproach to all other practitioners of the genre. The likeness of the Baronne Deslandes, painted about a year later, is by no means so bleak a performance; indeed with its slightly tongue-in-cheek accessories, it is almost skittish by comparison. But the circumstances of the commission were not dissimilar. Madeleine Annette Edme Angelique Vivier-Deslandes was born on 16 April 1866, and was thus in her late twenties when the portrait was painted. her father was Auguste Emile, Baron Vivier-Deslandes, and her mother, who died when she was young, had been Emile Caroline Helene Oppenheim. In September 1884she married Maurice napoleon Emile, Conte Fleury, a historian and journalist, and they had a son the following year; but the marriage was not a happy and they divorced in 1894. Madeleine was to re-marry in November 1901, taking as her second husband Prince Robert de Broglie, who was fourteen years her junior. The marriage took place in London, where she seems to have had an apartment by this date. However, it was even shorter-lived than the first, ending in divorce the following march. In fact her private life was consistently disaster-prone, and after the first world war she even lost the fortune she had inherited from her mother, having entrusted it to a shady banker. She died in Paris in March 1929, aged nearly sixty-three. Madeleine herself had literary talent, and from 1892 she was to publish a series of novels under the pseudonym "Ossit". these enjoyed a certain vogue in Symbolist circles, and were likened at the tie to "the scent of white lilac or the notes of a violin on a hot night". But her main claim to fame was the salon she established in Paris in the early 1890s. Among the celebrities she attracted were the painters Tissot, Forain and Jacques-Emile Blance; the composer Gabriel Faure; and the writers Edmond de Goncourt, Henri de Regnier, Jean Lorrain, Pierre louys, Robert de Montesquiou and Maurice Barres, who called her hi "muse juivre" and made her his mistress. there was also a fair sprinkling of the aristocracy, and n international flavour was given to proceedings by the presence among the habitues of such luminaries as Gabriele d'Annunzio, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Oscar Wilde. it was almost inevitable that the Baronne Deslandes, as she styled herself following her first divorce, should become, in the words of Jean Lorrain, "une fervente de Burne-Jones". As early as 1869 the artist's work had been illustrated in an article on contemporary British painting in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, but it was the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, with it consciously international ethos, that led to his acquiring recognition in France. in 1878, a year after the gallery opened, a number of Grosvenor pictures were shown at the Exposition Universalle in Paris. They included three works by Burne-Jones, among them The Beguiling of Merlin (fig. 20), one of the stars of the recent London show. This made an enormous impression on the French public, which had been well primed beforehand by an article in the magazine L'Art by Joseph Comyns Carr, one of the directors of the Grosvenor and a close friend of Burne-Jones. During the following decade, Burne-Jones's latest triumphs at the Grosvenor were often noted in the French press. in 1882 he was visited in London by the critic Ernest Chesneau, who wrote about him sympathetically in his book Artistes anglais contemporains, published the same year. Another critic, Edouard Rod, also came to interview him, the result being an article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in October 1887. Burne-Jones was widely seen as a forerunner of French Symbolism and an English counterpart to Gustave Moreau, his senior by seen years, who had exhibited at the Grosvenor in 1877. The sensational revelation of Burne-Jones's powers for which Paris had long been waiting finally occurred in 1889, when King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (Tate Gallery) was exhibited at that year's Exposition Universalle. As Laurence des Cars has written, "this event marked the true beginning of Burne-Jones relations with France". Critics vied with one antoher in praising this masterpiece by the artist who was, as Antonin Proust put it, "the most interesting of the Pre-Raphaelites"' Buren-Jones had produced an image of "extraordinary power". Everything about it. its "compelling line, strong colour scheme and harmonious composition", not to mention the "loving references to Carpaccio and Mantegna", gave it an "enduring appeal". At the insistence of Moreau, who was on the jury, Burne-Jones was awarded a gold medal. he also received the cross of the Legion d'honneur and was elected a corresponding member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts. The resounding success of Cophetua led to a craze for Burne-Jones in France that lasted for about five years. A flood of articles and reviews appeared in a wide variety of journals. outstanding were those by Paul Leprieur in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1892-3 and the long tribute by jean Lehor that came out in the Review de Paris in 1894. Burne-Jones was also discussed at length in Robert de la Sizeranne's book la peinture anglaise contemporaine, publisehd in 1895 and based on articles that had already apeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Meanwhile the English magazine the Studio, which had a large European readership and often featured the work of Burne-Jones, had been launched in 1893, while Frederick Hollyer's photographs were widely disseminated and highly prized. The result was a public that was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of the artist's work. Needless to say, fashion demanded that that work itself should be seen in Paris. in 1892 Burne-Jones gave three drawings to the Lexembourg, receiving in return a large Sevres vase inscribed with his initials. there were also hopes, not to be realised until recent times, that a major painting would be acquired for the national collection. Enthusiasts did, however, fare better at temporary exhibitions. Burne-Jones was approached by Puvis de Chavannes, the co-founder and moving spirit of the Salon of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts in the Chanps-Elysees, and Burne-Jones was happy to support it, rather as he supported the Grosvenor and New Galleries in London. in 1892 he showed a group of drawings. The Depths of the Sea and Perseus and the Graiae followed in 1893, Love Among the Ruins in 1895, and the portrait of Madeleine Deslandes in 1896. If the Baronne herself was a "fervente" of Burne-Jones, so were many of her friends. Oscar Wilde was on good terms with the artist, who greatly admired his wit. Robert de Montesquiou had visited England in 1885 with Jacques-Emile Blanche, eager to see "as much of Burne-Jones as he could". With introductions to Comyns-Carr and Henry James, both friends of the artist, in his pocket, he no doubt succeeded. Yet another of the Baronne's intimates, the poet Jean Lorrain, wrote verses in honour of Burne-Jones which he published in his collection Griseeries, balanced by a comparable piece on moreau, in 1887. Madeleine herself was responsible for a high flown article on her hero that appeared in Le Figaro in may 1893, and she probably helped to finance La Belle au Bois dormant, a play inspired by his Briar Rose paintings that opened at the avant-garde theatre de l'Oeurve on 24 May the following year. In order to write her article, the Baronne came to London in 1893, stayed at the Savoy Hotel and called on the artist in person. She was thrilled to meet the object of her long-held veneration, and immediately realised that to commission one of his rare portraits would be the ultimate accolade, giving her the indisputable status of high priestess to the Burne-Jones cult. Little is known of the picture's progress, and there is no record of how many poses were involved, but work seems to have proceeded during 1895, and on 12 December that year Burne-Jones assistant T.M.Rooke noted that his master was working on the dress and background. The latter would not have needed the sitter's presence, and it is possible that even her dress, while supplied by her, was modelled by a lay figure. Certainly the fact that Burne-Jones had now reached these areas suggests that the picture was nearly complete, although he may have continued to retouch it until the new year since it does not appear in his work-list until 1896. the form in which he recorded it - "Portrait of Madeleine Deslandes" - gives little away, although his use of her Christian name suggests they were on fairly free and easy terms. Burne-Jones was always susceptible to female charm, and the Baronne's obvious enthusiasm for his work may well have touched his heart. the Baronne had been painted by Maurice Boutet de Monvel in a portrait shown at the Champ-de-Mars in 1894. It has now disappeared but is reproduced in Philippe Saunier's article, are several photographs of the salonniere. It is fascinating too compare Burne-Jones's altogether more profound and imaginative account. the Baronne's head is a fine synthesis, nicely combining subtle characterisation with such typical Buren-Jones features as full lips and large soulful eyes. there is more than a hint of her Jewish blood, just as there is in the portraits of the wife and daughters of his friend Sir George Lewis, the famous solicitor, that the artist had painted a decade earlier. Not that there is any of the informality that defines the well-known portrait of young Katie Lewis, who is seen lying on her tummy reading a book. on the contrary, the Baronne sits bolt upright, as if she is overawed and on her best behaviour in the great man's presence (she leans casually over the chair-back in the Boutet de Monvel). Again, Burne-Jones had had a sitter like this before. When he had drawn Madame Wagner in 1877, she had sat "so steadily" that it was, he said, "like Memmon". a reference to the Trojan War hero who had been commemorated by a great statue at Thebes. The picture's predominantly blue and green tonality looks back to the Aesthetic movement, and might have been requested by the sitter herself. Dresses and interiors in this taste were by no means unknown in her circle. On the other hand, the dress she wears and the background drapery fall into the hard, jagged folds that are so characteristic of Burne-Jones's late work. Gone are the sinuous linear rhythms of his Botticellian phase and the more Byzantine idiom that had followed in the 1890s, to be replaced by the uncompromising and almost cubist" forms that he favoured in old age. Not for nothing does the picture appear in the work-lost between Arthur in Avalon (Ponce, Puerto Rico) and The Dream of Lancelot (Southampton), two major expressions of this style. There is also humour and irony in this portrait, as if the artist had summed up his sitter and was poking gentle fun at her by pandering to her self-image. he sees her as every inch a seer or sibyl. Ensconced in her oracle hung with blue drapery of the kind that had featured in her favourite briar Rose paintings, she gazes ahead with an inscrutable and enigmatic expression. Behind her grows a laurel, the traditional emblem of prophecy and poetical inspiration, while between her lightly clasped hands rests nothing less than a crystal ball. Such balls often feature in Symbolist iconography. Burne-Jones himself had introduced the motif into his painting Astrologia of 1865 (private collection), although there seems to be no evidence for Mrs Fitzgerld's assumption that the very same studio property was being re-used. Sometimes the ball is replaced by a mirror, such as the one behind the sitter's head in Burne-Jones's well known portrait of his daughter Margaret (private collection), painted in 1885. But while this does indeed add an element of ambiguity to the image, the more relevant comparison in the present context is The Wizard (Birmingham). Begun about the time that the Baronne's portrait was finished and still incomplete at Burne-Jones's death two years later, it shows a necromancer with a distinct resemblance to the artist himself conjuring up magic worlds for a young girl in a mirror hanging on the wall of his studio-laboratory. in other words, if there is irony in the portrait, there is also complicity. In the last analysis, both the artist and his sitter are mages. Alas, such subtleties were lost on the critics when the portrait was exhibited in 1896. one observed ungallantly that the Baronne resembled a washerwoman, another that she looked as if she had been made from a wax candle. A third wrote that Burne-Jones had let down his "adepts" and "compromised" himself by exhibiting a picture that was "so flat, so lacking in expression, so timid so uncertain in modelling and so feeble in drawing". Any skill that lay in the arrangement of the drapery was invited by the hardness and monotony of the folds. The face had no form, the hands were those of a doll. Was the Baronne dismayed? She certainly should not have been surprised. just as his reputation at home was already showing signs of decline, so the rage for Burne-Jones in Paris, at its height when the portrait was commissioned, was rapidly evaporating by 1896. Critics like Octave Mirbrau were beginning to express their disillusion, and even such a former devotee as Montesquiou was soon to voice his disenchantment. Infact the portrait was the last picture that Burne-Jones exhibited in Paris during his lifetime, although two, The Dream of Lancelot and The Prioress's Tale (Wilmington), would be shown at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The passing of the fashion, however, does not diminish its validity while it lasted, and the portrait remains a remarkable monument to an important and fascinating episode in Anglo-French cultural relations. Burne-Jones was not the only English artist to enjoy popularity in France at this period; Watts, Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites were also acclaimed. But it was Burne-Jones who caught the imagination not only of the intelligentsia but of the public at large. To find Paris showing comparable excitement over English painting, we have to go back to the sensation caused by the early Pre-Raphaelites at the Exposition Universelle of 1885, if not to John Constable's triumph at the salon of 1824. The subject precied here is immense, and for further information the reader should consult the articles listed in the bibliography above. For a contemporary account of Burne-Jones's sitter, see also Hyppolite Buffenoire, Les Salons des Paris; Grandes Dames contemporaines: La Baronne Deslandes, Paris 1895. We are grateful to Gabriel Noughton for her help in preparing this catalogue entry. Christie's 23 November 2005