Painted in 1914 at Belle-Île-en-Mer, the location of Sarah Bernhardt’s country home and retreat off the coast of Brittany, Abbema’s portrait of the actress celebrates their close friendship that began forty years earlier.
Provenance
Studio of the artist (and sold, her sale, Paris, 19 December 1927)
Private collection, Paris
Thence by descent
Hotel des ventes du pays de Caux, Bruno Roquigny, 11 June 2001
Private collection, France
Catalogue note
This intimate portrait by Louise Abbéma depicts the actress Sarah Bernhardt seated three quarter length in a shimmering pale blue and white gown that slips softly from one shoulder. Her auburn hair is swept up loosely, and her serene, slightly averted gaze lends the composition an air of poised reverie. Behind her, a cloud of blue hydrangeas and a stone ledge dissolve into a freely brushed garden and a silvery, atmospheric sky, all rendered in the loose, luminous Impressionist handling characteristic of Abbéma's plein air portraiture. Painted in 1914 at Belle-Île-en-Mer, the location of Sarah Bernhardt’s country home and retreat off the coast of Brittany, Abbema’s portrait of the actress celebrates their close friendship that began forty years earlier.
In a review of Abbema’s first official portrait of Sarah from the Salon of 1876, a critic for The Times sensed something of the special bond between painter and sitter:
"Melle Abema [sic] has another portrait of Melle Sarah Bernhardt but has not seen her subject like Clairin. It is not the actress she has painted, but the well-bred artistic lady. The whole picture has a grace and delicacy which a painter alone could never have attained. It is really the work of two ladies, one of whom has inspired the other." ("Salon," The Times, 1 May 1876, p. 10)
As mentioned in the Times review, the other portrait of Sarah Bernhardt at the 1876 Salon had been painted by Georges Clairin. This was not a coincidence. Clairin, the Orientalist painter and portraitist was one of Sarah's most devoted confidantes. Together with Louise, the three formed the self-styled "Société du Doigt dans l'Œil" (loosely, "the Society of Kidding Oneself"), a fictitious society of mutual admiration marked by its humor and taste for self-mockery.
It was to Belle-Île-en-Mer, a remote island off the coast of Brittany, that this circle would withdraw. At the fort of the Pointe des Poulains, which Bernhardt had acquired as her own retreat, the three passed their days together, and it was there, on the balcony of the mansion, that the present portrait took shape. Something of that shared happiness seems to have stayed with the canvas, for Abbéma remained deeply attached to it and never parted with it, keeping the work until her death.
We are grateful to Justine De Young for identifying, dating and situating this work, which will be included in her upcoming catalogue raisonné on Louise Abbéma.