Camille Métra (1864-1936) - The cup of the King of Thulé

Camille METRA or METRA-HUBBARD
(Paris, 1864 – Paris, 1936)

The cup of the King of Thule

Oil on canvas
signed lower right and dated
113 5 x 146 cm
1896

Exhibition: Salon of the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors of 1896 under number 627

Camille Métra, eldest daughter of the chemist Louis Métra and Rosalie Merny, was born on November 28, 1864 in Paris.
We know nothing to this day about her artistic training, however she was recognized in Parisian circles for her qualities as a figure painter and pastellist.
Camille married for the first time on January 18, 1887 in Paris with Adolphe Fernand Blayn, painter and had a child from this union named Prosper Daniel who will be a chemist like his grandfather. The bride and groom had as witnesses the painters Luc Olivier Merson (1846-1920) and Henry Lerolle (1848-1929) as well as the deputy Julien Antoine Simyan (1850-1926). Camille became a widow in 1892.
Our artist became known in 1895 with two works sent to the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts of the same year under her maiden name Métra.
Camille remarried on August 14, 1895 in Paris with Gustave Hubbard (Madrid, 1858 – Paris, 1927), lawyer and deputy of Seine et Oise and undersecretary of state for war in 1881, from whom she divorced on December 21, 1904 without children.
A member of the Union of Women Painters, she exhibited regularly at the Georges Petit gallery from 1891 to 1911 where she was noticed several times.
Camille died on November 13, 1936 in Paris at the age of 71.

Our painting dated 1896 and signed at the time with his compound name Métra-Hubbard, refers to a poem published in 1782 by Goethe and which he would take up extensively in his Faust (part 1, lines 2759-82). This poem would be brought back into fashion in the middle of the romantic 19th century by various translations, the best known of which were by Gérard de Nerval (1827) and later by Louise Ackermann (1863). Frantz Schubert in 1816, Hector Berlioz in 1845 and Charles Gounod in 1859 would set this poem to music in their respective operas.