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Artist or Maker: JULES JOSEPH LEFEBVRE, French, 1836-1911

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Description: signed Jules Lefebvre (lower right); also inscribed Clemence isaure. (upper left and right)

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Medium: oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 26 1/2 by 21 1/2 in.
67.4 by 54.6 cm

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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF SYLVIA SENTER

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Notes: From Henry James, A Little Tour in France, chapter XX, "It was impossible to have a finer person than that of the portress who pretended to show me the apartments in which the Floral Games are held...her talk was all in n's, g's, and d's, and in mute e's strongly accented, as autre, theatre, splendide...I wondered whether Clemence Isaure had been anything like this terrible Toulousaine of to-day, who would have been a capital figure-head for a floral game. The lady in whose honor the picture I have just mentioned was painted is a somewhat mythical personage, and she is not to be found in the "Biographie Universelle." She is, however, a very graceful myth; and if she never existed, her statue does, at least, - a shapeless effigy, transferred to the Capitol from the so-called tomb of Clemence in the old church of La Daurade."