Adolphe Yvon (1817–1893) - Portrait of Madame Hermann-Joseph Reinach

Frédéric Adolphe YVON
(Eschviller, 1817 – Paris, 1893)

Portrait of Madame Hermann-Joseph REINACH,
born Julie BÜDING (1828-1870),

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated on the left
65 x 54 cm without frame
84 x 73 cm with frame
1863

Born in Eschviller (Moselle) on January 30, 1817, Adolphe Yvon began his career as a civil servant in the Water and Forestry Administration, a position that he was not very passionate about. Thus, at the end of 1838, he entered the studio of the painter Paul Delaroche, where he learned portraiture and historical painting. He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1841; he received a first-class medal there in 1848 and then a medal of honor in 1857. He went to Russia in 1847 and observed the Crimean campaign as a protégé of Emperor Napoleon III. History, whether secular or religious, provided him with the subject of his first paintings (The Battle of Kulikovo painted in 1850, Marshal Ney supporting the rearguard of the Grande Armée during the Retreat from Russia (1856), then he devoted himself to military events and battles fought by the French armies during the wars of the Second Empire: The Curtain of Malakoff (1859), The Battle of Solferino (1861), The Battle of Magenta (1863), while painting portraits of French personalities of the time; thus, in 1861, he executed a Portrait of the Prince Imperial and in 1868 Portrait of the Emperor. Having become a renowned painter of battles, he was appointed a member of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1860. In 1863, he became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany, he opted for French nationality and painted several paintings about this conflict: The Priest of Bazeilles, a Charge of Reischoffen. In 1881, he was appointed professor of drawing at the École Polytechnique. He was promoted to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1867. Adolphe Yvon died in Paris on September 11, 1893.

Regarding this painting, there is a clear misidentification due to the labels and inscriptions on the back, leading to some confusion: since the painting was executed in 1863, it can only be the wife of Hermann-Joseph REINACH (1814-1899) - a banker by trade, née Julie BÜDING (1817-1893); she was herself the daughter of a Kassel banker.
From this union were born three sons:
- Joseph Reinach (1856-1921), lawyer, journalist, and politician,
- Salomon Reinach (1858-1932), archaeologist, member of the Institute,
- Théodore Reinach (1860, Saint-Germain-en-Laye-1928), archaeologist, mathematician, jurist, historian, and politician. It is to Théodore Reinach, a great humanist, that we owe the Villa Kérylos, built on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea in Beaulieu-sur-Mer by the architect Emmanuel Pontremoli between 1902 and 1908.