01 work, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Jacques-Émile Blanche's Lady in Black (Élisabeth Greffulhe), with Footnotes. #233

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942)

Lady in Black, circa 1890

Portrait of the Countess of Greffuhle (Élisabeth Greffulhe)

Oil on canvas

63 x 49 in / 160.02 x 124.46 cm

Private collection

Estimated for GBP 80,000 – GBP 120,000 in Dec 2023

Countess Marie Anatole Louise Élisabeth Greffulhe (11 July 1860 – 21 August 1952) was a French socialite, known as a renowned beauty and queen of the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris.

She was born in Paris, the daughter of Joseph de Riquet de Caraman. Through her father, she was a granddaughter of Teresa Cabarrús, one of the leaders of Parisian social life during the Directory, and a great-granddaughter of memoirist Émilie Pellapra, who claimed to be a daughter of Napoleon.

The Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, wrote about Élisabeth: "The Comtesse Greffulhe is always beautiful and always elsewhere. But it would be a mistake to think that her life was merely the pursuit of pleasure (...) not only is she beautiful, but she is a lady. Preferring the privacy of her own house in the rue d'Astorg and at Bois-Boudran in the country, the Comtesse Greffulhe never dined out except at the British Embassy. When Edward VII came to Paris, he dined informally at her house. After a restricted youth (...) she set herself to attracting musicians, scholars, physicists, chemists, doctors."

The countess helped establish the art of James Whistler, and she actively promoted such artists as Auguste Rodin, Antonio de La Gandara and Gustave Moreau. Gabriel Fauré dedicated to her his Pavane, which received its first full performance, with the optional chorus, at a garden party she held in the Bois de Boulogne. She was a patron of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and launched a fashion for greyhound racing. Fascinated by science, she helped Marie Curie to finance the creation of the Institute of Radium, and Édouard Branly to pursue his research on radio transmission and telemechanical systems.

She died in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 21 August 1952. More on Élisabeth Greffulhe

Jacques-Émile Blanche (French: 1 January 1861 – 20 September 1942) was a French artist born in Paris. He was brought up in the rich Parisian neighborhood of Passy in a house that had belonged to the Princesse de Lambal

Although Blanche received some instruction in painting, he may be regarded as self-taught. He became a very successful portrait painter, with a style derived from 18th-century English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough as well as Édouard Manet and John Singer Sargent. He worked in London, where he spent time from 1870 on, as well as Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. One of his closest friends was Marcel Proust, who helped edit several of Blanche's publications. He also knew Henry James and is mentioned in Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

In 1902 Jacques-Émile Blanche took over the direction of the Académie de La Palette, where he would remain director until 1911. He taught at the Académie Vitti in 1903.

He was the author of the unreliable Portraits of a Lifetime: the late Victorian era: the Edwardian pageant: 1870–1914 (London: J.M. Dent, 1937) and More Portraits of a Lifetime, 1918–1938 (London: J.M. Dent, 1939), about which Walter Sickert said "he is liable to twist things he hears or doesn't into monstrous fibs". More on Jacques-Émile Blanche

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