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Dimensions: measurements 13 3/4 by 10 1/2 in. alternate measurements 34.9 by 26.7 cm
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Provenance: John Singer Sargent
His sale; Christie Manson & Woods, London, July 24-27, 1925, lot 273
Knoedler & Company, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Scott and Fowles, New York
Private Collection (and sold: Christie's, New York, November 1, 1995, lot 16, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
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Literature: G. L. Marini, ed., Il valore dei dipinti italiani dell'Ottocento e del primo Novecento : l'analisi critica, storica ed economica, Turin, 14th edition, 1996, p. 96
Tiziano Panconi, Giovanni Boldini, L'uomo e la pittura, Pisa, 1998, pp. 68, p. 69 illustrated (color plate); no. 25/B-11, illustrated
Piero Dini and Francesca Dini, Giovanni Boldini, 1842-1931, Catalogo Ragionato, Turin, 2002, vol. III, p. 111, no. 179, illustrated p. 69
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Notes: PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
As with A Friend of the Marquis (see lot 92), the present work is part of Boldini's series of small scale compositions which reveal the private rooms of Empire period households, providing a glimpse of the leisurely daily lives of well-dressed women. Indeed the composition of the two works is closely related, though the space inhabited by these elegant ladies in an interior holds more elaborate decoration. In this well-appointed room, the two women, one doing a needlepoint, the other quietly reading, sit at a guéridon (most likely dating circa 1804-1815), on a pair of gilded and white-painted armchairs, while a Louis XVI settee (circa 1785) completes the furniture arrangement. Adding to the period décor are the objets on the mantelpiece and the painted urn within a lozenge on the wall, a distinct element of Louis XVI or Directoire style. In its precisely painted details, tight composition, and sensual decorative appeal, the present work invites an exploration into the artistic community which inspired it. In 1871, Boldini settled in Paris, at the Place Pigalle, and quickly became a part of the vibrant city's art scene in which Degas, Manet and Sisley were all active members; meanwhile, his dealer Adolphe Goupil worked closely with Bouguereau, Gérôme and other established artists in the field. Boldini's stature in the art world ascended around the same time as another young, emerging artist, John Singer Sargent. Sargent, like Boldini, had made his way from Italy to Paris, in his case to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1874, before entering the atelier of the highly successful portraitist Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran, Michael Quick, American Expatriate Painters of the Late Nineteenth Century, exh. cat., Dayton, Ohio, 1976, p. 129). While it is difficult to determine exactly when Boldini and Sargent may have first met, the two certainly traveled in the same social and artistic circles, and their friendship has been documented through the 1880s. Each artist exhibited at the Salon within a few years of one another: Boldini for the first time in 1874, Sargent in 1877. In the early 1880s the two artists presented at the Société internationale de peintres et sculpteurs at the Galerie Georges Petit, celebrated as members of a group of innovative young artists known as "les jeunes" which also included included Jules Bastien-Lepage (see lot 2), Jean Béraud, Jean-Charles Cazin, and Max Liebermann among others (Marc Simpson, Uncanny Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent, exh. cat., New Haven, 1997). The Painter's Craft John Singer Sargent Confidences Confidences
