Presumed portrait of Anna de Noailles - Madeleine Lemaire (1845 - 1928)

Madeleine Lemaire (Les Arcs 1845 - Paris 1928)

Portrait présumé d’Anna de Noailles, c. 1913-1914,
oil on original canvas, 70 by 47 ¼ in.

Signed lower right: « Madeleine Lemaire »

Provenance
Galerie Alain Lesieutre, Paris, before 1971.
Collection Bruno Roy.
Sotheby’s, London, June 20, 1989, lot 44: Woman Seated in a Dagobert Armchair.
Sotheby’s, New York, May 24, 1995, lot 366: Woman Seated in a Dagobert Armchair.
Private Collection.
Exhibited
Paris Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. 24e exposition, April 15 - June 30, 1914,
n° 758: Portrait Moderne.
Bendor, Fondation Paul Ricard, L’Art et la Vie en France à la Belle Epoque, September - October
1971, n° 248: portrait d’une femme assise.
2022 , the epic of the Belle Epoque told by Marcel Proust; Villa Du Temps Retrouvé, Cabourg: Presumed portrait of Anna de Noailles


The present portrait painting is noticeable among Madeleine Lemaire’s artworks, who was
best known for her flower paintings. Her close friend Marcel Proust, who frequented assiduously
her Salon since 1892, wanted her to be remembered as a great artist who had not painted “less
landscapes, churches, characters, because her extraordinary talent extend[ed] to all the genres.”1
Marcel Proust wrote a sensitive tribute to an accomplished painter. This portrait painting
accurately reflects Madeleine Lemaire’s devotion to her art and the authentic image of the society
of her time.
This portrait of a young woman seated in a Dagobert armchair is part of Madeleine
Lemaire’s last display to the 1914 Paris Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. At almost
70 years old, the artist contributed for the last time to the Salon of the Société Nationale des
Beaux-Arts that she helped created among others (Société des Aquarellistes, Société des
pastellistes). At the end of her career, she preferred to exhibit her paintings at Jean Charpentier’s
Gallery or Georges Petit’s Gallery.
At the dawn of the First World War, her contribution to French cultural and artistic life
had been considerable. Her Salon attracted the Paris smart set. Actors of the Comédie Française
performed at her place. She was a prominent painter and socialite whose paintings were sold at
high prices. Coming from the upper middle class, Madeleine Lemaire worked from an early age
to perfect her talent as a painter while animating a musical and literary Salon of considerable
historical significance. Marcel Proust modeled after Madeleine Lemaire’s independence of
character and intellectual exigency his two heroines in A la recherche du temps perdu :
Madame de Villeparisis and Madame de Verdurin.