 Erwin Blumenfeld (geboren 26. Januar 1897 in Berlin; gestorben 4. Juli 1969 in Rom) war ein Fotograf deutsch-jüdischer Herkunft und in den 1940er und 1950er Jahren einer der weltweit gefragtesten Porträt- und Modefotografen.  Erwin Blumenfeld photographing Sophie Malgat, photographed by Gordon Parks, 1950 Erwin Blumenfeld (26 January 1897 – 4 July 1969) was an American photographer of German origin. He was born in Berlin, and in 1941 emigrated to the United States, where he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer, working as a free-lancer for Harper's Bazaar, Life and American Vogue. His personal photographic work showed the influence of Dadaism and Surrealism; his two main areas of interest were death and women. He was expert in laboratory work, and experimented with photographic techniques such as distortion, multiple exposure, photo-montage and solarisation. BiographyBlumenfeld was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897. As a young man he worked in the clothes trade and wrote poetry. In 1918 he went to Amsterdam, where he came into contact with Paul Citroen and Georg Grosz. In 1933 he made a photomontage showing Hitler as a skull with a swastika on its forehead; this image was later used in Allied propaganda material in 1943. In 1921, he married Lena Citroen, with whom he had three children. In 1922 he started a leather goods shop, which failed in 1935.He moved to Paris, where in 1936 he set up as a photographer and did free-lance work for French Vogue.  Fashion photo by Ervin Blumenfeld After the outbreak of the Second World War he was placed in an internment camp; in 1941 he was able to emigrate to the United States. There he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer, and worked as a free-lancer for Harper's Bazaar, Life and American Vogue.  Portrait of Grace Kelly photo by Ervin Blumenfeld Ervin Blumenfeld died in Rome on 4 July 1969.  Fashion photo by Ervin Blumenfeld Further interestBooks Blumenfeld started working on Blumenfeld: Meine 100 Besten Fotos in 1955; it was eventually published in 1979; an English translation, Blumenfeld: My One Hundred Best Photos, was published in New York in 1981. Another autobiographical work was published in German as Einbildungsroman by Eichborn Verlag in 1998, and in English as Eye to I: The Autobiography of a Photographer by Thames and Hudson in 1999  Eye to I: The Autobiography of a Photographer de Erwin Blumenfeld Videos Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969). Photographies, dessins et photomontages
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Le comte Robert de Montesquiou, né à Paris le 19 mars 1855 et mort à Menton (Alpes-Maritimes) le 11 décembre 1921, est un poète, homme de lettres, dandy et critique d'art et de littérature. « Poète et dandy insolent », il aurait servi de modèle à des Esseintes dans À Rebours (1884) de Huysmans et à Monsieur de Phocas de Jean Lorrain. Il fournit aussi à Marcel Proust l'un des modèles du baron de Charlus dans À la recherche du temps perdu, ce qui le rendit furieux malgré les dénégations de Proust. La postérité l'a malmené sans tenir compte de la diversité de ses activités et de la qualité de ses écrits.  Portrait of Count Robert de Montesquiou by Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), 1897 Oil on canvas En 1897, Boldini est chargé, par l'intermédiaire d'une amie commune, Madame Veil-Picard, de faire le portrait du comte Robert de Montesquiou. Le peintre ne peut qu'être attiré par la personnalité de cet homme de lettres, emblème de l'esthète contemporain et nouvelle incarnation du dandy baudelairien.  Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1855-1921) par Lucien Doucet, 1879 Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac (7 March 1855, Paris – 11 December 1921, Menton), was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy. He is reputed to have been the inspiration both for Jean des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans' À rebours (1884) and, most famously, for the Baron de Charlus in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927). He also won a bronze medal in the hacks and hunter combined event at the 1900 Summer Olympics. Biography Robert Montesquiou with his Persian cat Robert de Montesquiou was a scion of the French Montesquiou-Fézensac family. His paternal grandfather was Count Anatole de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1788–1878), aide-de-camp to Napoleon and grand officer of the Légion d'honneur; his father Thierry bought a Charnizay manor with his wife's dowry, built a mansion in Paris, and was elected Vice-President of the Jockey Club. He was a successful stockbroker who left a substantial fortune. Robert was the last of his parents' children. His cousin, Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe (1860–1952), was one of Marcel Proust's models for the Duchess of Guermantes in À la recherche du temps perdu. Montesquiou had a strong influence on Émile Gallé (1846–1904), a glass artist he collaborated with and commissioned major works from, and from whom he received hundreds of adulatory letters. He also wrote the verses found in the optional choral parts of Gabriel Fauré's Pavane.  Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac by Whistler, 1891–92 The portrait Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac was painted in 1891–92 by Montesquiou's close friend, and model for many of his eccentric mannerisms, James Whistler. The French artist Antonio de La Gandara (1861–1917) produced several portraits of Montesquiou.  Comte Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921), photo par Nadar, 1895 Tall, black-haired, Kaiser-moustached, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand—the poseur absolute. Montesquiou's homosexual tendencies were patently obvious, but he may in fact have lived a chaste life. He had no affairs with women, although in 1876 he reportedly once slept with the great actress Sarah Bernhardt, after which he vomited for twenty-four hours. (She remained a great friend.)"  Sarah Bernhardt(1844-1923) in Frou-Frou, 1882 Montesquiou had social relationships and collaborations with many celebrities of the fin de siècle period, including Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897), Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896), Eleonora Duse (1858–1924), Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), Gabriele d'Annunzio (1863–1938), Anna de Noailles (1876–1933), Marthe Bibesco (1886–1973), Luisa Casati (1881–1957), Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), and Franca Florio. While Montesquiou had many aristocratic women friends, he much preferred the company of bright and attractive young men. In 1885, he began a close long-term relationship with Gabriel Yturri (March 12, 1860 – July 6, 1905), a handsome South American immigrant from Tucuman, Argentina, who became his secretary, companion, and lover.  Robert de Montesquiou(7 March 1855 – 11 December 1921) After Yturri died of diabetes, Henri Pinard replaced him as secretary in 1908 and eventually inherited Montesquiou's much reduced fortune. Montesquiou and Yturri are buried alongside each other at Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, Île-de-France, France.  Robert de Montesquiou et Gabriel Yturri par Sem, graveur (1863-1934)  Portrait of Ida Rubinstein, 1913, by Antonio de la Gandára Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (5 October 1883 – 20 September 1960) was a Russian dancer, actress, art patron and Belle Époque figure. She performed with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1911 and then quit to form her own company. Boléro by Ravel (1928) was among her commissions.  Mme Ida Rubinstein dans La Dame aux camélias. Robe, Charles Frederick de Worth BiographyRubinstein was born into one of Russia's richest families, to Jewish parents in Kharkov, Russian Empire, and grew up in Saint Petersburg. For many years, it was a mystery whether she was born in Kharkov or Saint Petersburg, complicated by the rumour that "Ida" was short for "Adelaida". Rubinstein herself would not confirm where she was born, nor if Ida was a nickname, preferring the aura of mystery. Ida's grandfather, Ruvim (Roman) Rubinstein, had been a successful sugar trader in Kharkov. He moved to Saint Petersburg, where he founded the company Roman Rubinstein & Sons with his two sons, Lev (Leon) and Adolf (Anton). The family multiplied their investment many times over, becoming millionaires. By the time Ida was born, the family expanded to own several banks, including the First Bank of Kharkov, sugar mills and breweries. The family donated large sums of money to charities, particularly the arts. Lev and Adolf were both well educated; they regularly hosted prominent intellectuals and artists in their home. Adolf's son Iosif became a successful pianist who studied under Franz Liszt. Her mother died when Ida was very young, and in 1892, her father Lev died in Frankfurt, leaving her a vast fortune. In 1893, the 8-year-old Ida was sent to Saint Petersburg to live with her aunt, socialite "Madame" Gorvits (Horwitz). Rubinstein grew up in her aunt's mansion on the city's famed Promenade des Anglais, where she was given the best education. She became fluent in English, French, German and Italian. When she became interested in Ancient Greece, a Greek professor was invited to tutor her in Saint Petersburg.  Ida Rubinstein in 1909 In Paris, Ida Rubinstein began her career as an actress, appearing on stage in various stages of "indecent" garb. While it was perfectly respectable for the upper class to be seen at the theatre, being an actress was no different from being a prostitute in the eyes of her horrified relatives. Her brother-in-law, a Parisian doctor had her declared legally insane in order to commit her to a mental asylum to save the family's honor.  Ida Rubinstein (5 October 1883 – 20 September 1960)  Ida Rubinstein Her family in Kharkov and Saint Petersburg, unhappy with her being in an asylum, demanded she be released and sent home. Once in Saint Petersburg, she was chaperoned at all times by her governess, as was customary for an unmarried young woman of her social class. To earn her freedom and right to control her fortune, she married her first cousin Vladimir Gorvits, who was madly in love with her and allowed her to travel and perform. She had, by the standard of Russian ballet, little formal training. Tutored by Mikhail Fokine, she made her debut in 1908. This was a single private performance of Oscar Wilde's Salomé, in which she stripped nude in the course of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Sergei Diaghilev took her with the Ballets Russes and she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in the Paris season of 1909, and Zobéide in Scheherazade in 1910. Both exotic ballets were choreographed by Fokine, and designed by Léon Bakst. Her partner in Scheherazade was the great Vaslav Nijinsky. Scheherazade was admired at the time for its racy sensuality and sumptuous staging, but these days it is rarely performed; to modern tastes, it is considered too much of a pantomime and its then fashionable Orientalism appears dated.  Ida Rubinstein left the Ballets Russes in 1911.  Ida Rubinstein in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, 1910 After leaving the Ballets Russes, Rubinstein formed her own dance company, using her inherited wealth, and commissioned several lavish productions. In 1911, she performed in Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien. The creative team was Fokine (choreography); Bakst (design); Gabriele d'Annunzio (text) and score by Debussy. This was both a triumph for its stylized modernism and a scandal; the Archbishop of Paris prohibited Catholics from attending because St. Sebastian was being played by a woman and a Jew.  Ida Rubinstein as Saint Sebastian in the play The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1911  Ida Rubinstein 1912 After the First World War, Ida Rubinstein appeared in a number of plays, and in Staat's Istar at the Paris Opera in 1924. She also played the leading role in the 1921 silent film La Nave based on D'Annunzio's play of the same name and directed by his son.  Ida Rubinstein during the First World War, 1914-1918  Ida Rubinstein in 1922 Between 1928 and 1929, she directed her own company in Paris with Nijinska as choreographer. She commissioned and performed in Maurice Ravel's Boléro in 1928. The repertoire also included The Firebird (L'Oiseau de Feu) with music by Stravinsky, and choreography by Fokine; this had been one of the most sensational creations for the Ballets Russes. The company was revived in 1931 and 1934, with new works. In 1934, the French government awarded her the Légion d'honneur. Ida Rubinstein closed her company in 1935, and she was awarded honorary French citizenship that same year. In 1939 she gave her last performance in the play Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher in Paris and that same year, she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion, the highest honor awarded by French Government. Rubinstein is not considered to be in the top tier of ballerinas; She did, however, have tremendous stage presence and was able to act. She was also a significant patron and she tended to commission works that suited her abilities, works that mixed dance with drama and stagecraft. In 1940, she left France during the German invasion, and made her way to England via Algeria and Morocco. There she helped wounded Free French soldiers until 1944. Walter Guinness (later Lord Moyne), her long-term lover and sponsor, remained supportive, providing a suite at the Ritz Hotel, until he was assassinated by the Stern Gang in late 1944.  Ida Rubinstein(5 October 1883 – 20 September 1960) Ida Rubinstein returned to France after the war, living finally at Les Olivades in Vence, France. She died there in 1960 and is buried nearby.  Portrait of Ida Rubinstein by Romaine Brooks, Le Trajet, circa 1911, Smithsonian American Art Museum. It was Ida Rubinstein's elusive quality that fascinated. She expressed an inner self that had no particular denomination. Her beauty belonged to those mental images that demand manifestation, and whatever period she represented she became its image. In reality she was the crystallization of a poet's image, a painter's vision, and as such she possessed further significance ... It was her gift for impersonating the beauty of every époque, that marked Ida Rubinstein as unique.  Portrait of Ida Rubinstein by Romaine Brooks, 1917, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum Further interestArticles
 Gabriele D'anunnzio(22 March 1863 - 1 March 1938) General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso OMS CMG MVM (12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938), sometimes spelled d'Annunzio, was an Italian poet, playwright, and journalist and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate ("the Poet") or Il Profeta ("the Prophet"). D'Annunzio was associated with the Decadent movement in his literary works, which interplayed closely with French Symbolism and British Aestheticism. Such works represented a turn against the naturalism of the preceding romantics and was both sensuous and mystical. He came under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche which would find outlets in his literary and later political contributions. His affairs with several women, including Eleonora Duse and Luisa Casati, received public attention. During the First World War, perception of D'Annunzio in Italy transformed from literary figure into a national war hero. He was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army and took part in actions such as the Flight over Vienna. As part of an Italian nationalist reaction against the Paris Peace Conference, he set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume with himself as Duce. The constitution made "music" the fundamental principle of the state and was corporatist in nature. Though D'Annunzio never declared himself a fascist, he has been described as the forerunner of Italian fascism as his ideas and aesthetics influenced it and the style of Benito Mussolini.  Portrait of Gabriele d’Annunzio, photo by Mario Nunes Vais, 1892 Biography Birthplace of Gabriele D'Annunzio Museum in Pescara Gabriele D'Annunzio was born in the township of Pescara, in the region of Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town, Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta D'Annunzio (1831–1893). His father had been adopted at age 13 by a childless rich uncle, Antonio D'Annunzio.Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood, because of his angelic looks, a story that has largely been disproven. His precocious talent was recognised early in life, and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany. He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of sixteen — a small volume of verses called Primo Vere (1879). His verse was distinguished by such agile grace that literary critic Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article.  Gabriele D'anunnzio(22 March 1863 - 1 March 1938) childhood In 1881 D'Annunzio entered the University of Rome La Sapienza, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina, and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers. In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism.  Gabriele D'anunnzio(22 March 1863 - 1 March 1938) He published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L'intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886). Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author's native province. Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D'Annunzio's second and characteristic manner. His conception of style was new, and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life.  Gabriele D'anunnzio(22 March 1863 - 1 March 1938) reading Gabriele D'Annunzio joined the staff of the Tribuna, under the pseudonym of "Duca Minimo". Here he wrote Il libro d'Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance. Il libro d'Isotta is interesting also, because in it one can find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets one can find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892). D'Annunzio's first novel Il Piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L'innocente (The Intruder). These three novels made a profound impression. L'innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics. His next work, Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death) (1894), was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks) (1896) and Il fuoco (The Flame of Life) (1900); the latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language. D'Annunzio's poetic work of this period, in most respects his finest, is represented by Il Poema Paradisiaco (1893), the Odi navali (1893), a superb attempt at civic poetry, and Laudi (1900). A later phase of D'Annunzio's work is his dramatic production, represented by Il sogno di un mattino di primavera (1897), a lyrical fantasia in one act, and his Città Morta (The Dead City) (1898), written for Sarah Bernhardt. In 1883, Gabriele D'Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, but the marriage ended in 1891. In 1894, he began a love affair with the actress Eleonora Duse(1858-1924) which became a cause célèbre. He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as La città morta (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910.  Gabriele D'Annunzio with Eleonora Duse After meeting the Marchesa Luisa Casati in 1903, he began a lifelong turbulent on again-off again affair with Luisa, that lasted until a few years before his death.  By 1910, his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt, and he fled to France to escape his creditors. There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St Sebastian), 1911, written for Ida Rubinstein.  Gabriele d'Annunzio with dancer Ida Rubinstein. The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books. The work was not successful as a play, but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times, notably by Pierre Monteux (in French), Leonard Bernstein (sung in French, acted in English), and Michael Tilson Thomas (in French). In 1912 and 1913, D'Annunzio worked with opera composer Pietro Mascagni on his opera Parisina, staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue, near Paris. In 1901, D'Annunzio and Ettore Ferrari, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, founded the Università Popolare di Milano (Popular University of Milan), located in via Ugo Foscolo. D'Annunzio held the inaugural speech and subsequently became an associated professor and a lecturer in the same institution.  Gabriele d'Annunzio After the start of World War I, D'Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy's entry on the side of the Triple Entente. With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot, losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident. In February 1918, he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, lit. the Bakar Mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster. On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading nine planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna. This is called in Italian "il Volo su Vienna", "the Flight over Vienna". On 12 September 1919, he led the seizure by 2,000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city, forcing the withdrawal of the inter-Allied (American, British and French) occupying forces. The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume, but were denied. D'Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro with himself as "Duce" (leader), but finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy.  Gabriele D'Annunzio (left) with a fellow officer After the Fiume episode, D'Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning. Although D'Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy. In 1924 he was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Prince of Montenevoso (Italian: Principe di Montenevoso). In 1937 he was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy.  D'Annunzio (1863 - 1938) with Benito Mussolini (1883 - 1945) . Photo by Henry Guttmann/Getty Images. D'Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke, at his home in Gardone Riviera. He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.  Gabriele D'anunnzio(22 March 1863 - 1 March 1938) At the height of his success, D'Annunzio was celebrated for the originality, power and decadence of his writing. Although his work had immense impact across Europe, and influenced generations of Italian writers, his fin de siècle works are now little known, and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations. A prolific writer, his novels in Italian include Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure, 1889), Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death, 1894), and Le vergini delle rocce (The Maidens of the Rocks, 1896). D'Annunzio's literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school, and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes. One of D'Annunzio's most significant novels, scandalous in its day, is Il fuoco (The Flame of Life) of 1900, in which he portrays himself as the Nietzschean Superman Stelio Effrena, in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse. His short stories showed the influence of Guy de Maupassant. He was also associated with the Italian noblewoman Luisa Casati, an influence on his novels and one of his mistresses. In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular, most notably his poem "La pioggia nel pineto" (The Rain in the Pinewood), which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuousness of his poetry. His work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1912 Summer Olympics.  Gabriele D'Annunzio reading (photo by Mario Nunes Vais) Gabriele D'Annunzio's life and work are commemorated in a museum, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani (The Shrine of Italian Victories). He planned and developed it himself, adjacent to his villa at Gardone Riviera on the southwest bank of Lake Garda, between 1923 and his death. Now a national monument, it is a complex of military museum, library, literary and historical archive, theatre, war memorial and mausoleum. His birthplace is also open to the public as a museum, Birthplace of Gabriele D'Annunzio Museum in Pescara.  Villa of Vittoriale degli italiani, Gabriele D'Annunzio museum. Further interestArticles Books   Portrait of Franca Florio(27 December 1873 – 10 November 1950), oil on canvas, 1901, by Giovanni Boldini Franca Florio (Palermo, 27 December 1873 – Migliarino Pisano, 10 November 1950), born Francesca Paola Jacona della Motta dei baroni di San Giuliano and commonly called Donna Franca, was an Italian noblewoman, socialite and a prominent protagonist of the Belle Époque. Descendant of a Sicilian noble family, she married the entrepreneur Ignazio Florio Jr., member of the wealthy Florio family. She was nicknamed "Queen of Palermo". BiographyFrancesca Paola Jacona della Motta was born in Palermo on 27 December 1873. She belonged to an impoverished family of the Sicilian high aristocracy. Her father was Pietro Jacona della Motta, baron of San Giuliano, and her mother was Costanza Notarbartolo di Villarosa, sister of Pietro Notarbartolo, duke of Villarosa. Her maternal ancestry also included the House of Montcada and the Lucchesi-Palli, princes of Campofranco. Despite the impoverishment of the family, the prestigious ancestry of Donna Franca made her a good catch, especially in the eyes of the Sicilian high bourgeoisie looking for nobility. Therefore, on 11 February 1893, at the age of 19, Franca married the entrepreneur and shipowner Ignazio Florio Jr., heir of the Florio family's economic empire. The assets of Ignazio Florio Jr. included the Florio winery (leading company in the production of Marsala wine), the majority of the Sicilian tuna traps, the Oretea foundry, the Florio Bank (previously belonging to the Rothschild family), and the 40% of the Navigazione Generale Italiana.  Ignazio Florio Jr., Donna Franca and their first children, Giovanna (1893-1902) and Ignazio "baby boy" (1898-1903). After her marriage with Ignazio Florio Jr., Donna Franca became a prominent figure of the European social life. In the early 20th century, thanks to the influence of the Florio family, Sicily (especially Palermo and the town of Taormina) was an important meeting place for the European wealthiest elite. With her yachts called Sultana and Aegusa, Donna Franca was able to attend the social life not only in Sicily, but even in the Côte d'Azur. Other places frequented by Donna Franca were Berlin, Paris, London, etc. In 1902 she became lady-in-waiting of the Queen consort of Italy Elena of Montenegro. Donna Franca was also an art patron. She was a friend of the Italian writer and poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, leading figure of the Decadent movement in Italy, who described her as "a unique woman. A creature whose every movement possesses a divine rhythm". In 1901 Donna Franca met the painter Giovanni Boldini, an internationally renowned portraitist who used to work especially in Paris and London. Therefore, Boldini painted the famous "Portrait of Franca Florio". The painting was commissioned by Ignazio Florio. Boldini’s initial, beautifully provocative version, painted in 1901 was not approved of by Ignazio Florio. He reportedly found it risqué and "unnatural and unreal" looking and demanded that Boldini lengthen the dress and add full sleeves with wide black lace. Once Boldini had reworked the work to oblige his commissioner’s discontent it was exhibited at the 1903 Venice Biennial. The portrait remained like this until 1924 when, with the demise of the Florio family’s wealth, Baron Maurice de Rothschild acquired it. Therefore, Rothschild engaged Boldini to restore it to its original sensual version. After two auction (Christie's 1995 and Sotheby's 2005), the painting has been on display at the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea in Palermo since 2006. In 2017 it gone to auction again. It is said that the necklace in the painting, with 365 pearls, one for each day of the year, was a present from the husband, begging forgiveness for his many affairs.  Portrait of Franca Florio/Ritratto di donna Franca Florio (1924), 221x119 cm, by Giovanni Boldini Other artists connected to her were the dialect poet Trilussa, the composers Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo, the painter Ettore De Maria Bergler, the sculptor Pietro Canonica, the novelist Matilde Serao and the French dandy Robert de Montesquiou.  sculpture of Franca Florio by Pietro Canonica, Villa Borghese, Rome. In the same years, Franca Florio also met the German Emperor Wilhelm II, who became one of her most prestigious admirers. He nicknamed Donna Franca with the appellation of "Star of Italy" due to her beauty. Subsequently, the Emperor and his wife, Augusta Victoria, went various times to Palermo. In her palace in Palermo Donna Franca also welcomed the British King Edward VII and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark, the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and celebrities such as Oscar Wilde, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly and Maria Callas.[  Franca Florio and the German Emperor Wilhelm II. In her palace in Palermo Donna Franca also welcomed the British King Edward VII and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark, the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and celebrities such as Oscar Wilde, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly and Maria Callas. After the bankruptcy of Ignazio Florio Jr., Donna Franca retreated to the Villa Silviati, belonging to the husband of her daughter Costanza Igiea Florio, in the frazione of Migliarino Pisano, in the town of Vecchiano (Pisa). Franca Florio died on 10 November 1950 and was buried in the Cemetery of Santa Maria di Gesù, Palermo.  Donna Franca in 1911 Further InterestVideos
 Giovanni Boldini(1842-1931), Self-portrait at Montorsoli, (1892), Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Vasari Corridor Giovanni Boldini (31 December 1842 – 11 July 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. BiographyGiovanni Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and in 1862 went to Florence for six years to study and pursue painting and met there other realist painters known as the Macchiaioli, who were Italian precursors to Impressionism. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known. Moving to London, Boldini attained success as a portraitist. He completed portraits of premier members of society including Lady Holland and the Duchess of Westminster. From 1872 he lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Macchiaioli influence and a brio reminiscent of the work of younger artists, such as John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu. He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment. In 1897 he had a solo exhibition in New York. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1895, 1903, 1905, and 1912.  Portrait of Franca Florio by Giovanni Boldini The famous Giovanni Boldini's "Portrait of Franca Florio" was commissioned by Ignazio Florio. Boldini’s initial, beautifully provocative version, painted in 1901 was not approved of by Ignazio Florio. He reportedly found it risqué and "unnatural and unreal" looking and demanded that Boldini lengthen the dress and add full sleeves with wide black lace. Once Boldini had reworked the work to oblige his commissioner’s discontent it was exhibited at the 1903 Venice Biennial. The portrait remained like this until 1924 when, with the demise of the Florio family’s wealth, Baron Maurice de Rothschild acquired it. Therefore, Rothschild engaged Boldini to restore it to its original sensual version. After two auction (Christie's 1995 and Sotheby's 2005), the painting has been on display at the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea in Palermo since 2006. In 2017 it went to auction again. It is said that the necklace in the painting, with 365 pearls, one for each day of the year, was a present from the husband, begging forgiveness for his many affairs.  Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt(1844-1923) by Giovanni Boldini(31 December 1842-11 January 1931), 1904  Photographic portrait of Giovanni Boldini (1910)  Oil painting Lady in Rose, 1924, by Giovanni Boldini(31 December 1842-11 January 1931), Museo Boldini, Ferrara  Detail Oil painting Lady in Rose, 1924, by Giovanni Boldini(31 December 1842-11 January 1931), Museo Boldini, Ferrara A Boldini portrait of his former muse Marthe de Florian, a French actress, was discovered in a Paris flat in late 2010, hidden away from view on the premises that were unvisited for over 50 years. The portrait has never been listed, exhibited or published and the flat belonged to de Florian's granddaughter, who inherited the flat after her father's death in 1966 and lived in the South of France after the outbreak of the Second World War and never returned to Paris. A love-note and a biographical reference to the work painted in 1888, when the actress was 24, cemented its authenticity. A full-length portrait of the lady in the same clothing and accessories, but less provocative, hangs in the New Orleans Museum of Art. The discovery of his painting in the 70-years-empty apartment forms the background to Michelle Gable's 2014 novel A Paris Apartment.  Portrait of the actress Marthe de Florian aged 24 by Giovanni Boldini(31 December 1842-11 January 1931) Further interestWebsite: Books:
 Jean René Lacoste (dit Le Crocodile, ou L'Alligator), né le 2 juillet 1904 à Paris et décédé à Saint-Jean-de-Luz au Pays basque le 12 octobre 1996, est un champion de tennis, industriel, ingénieur et designer français, fondateur de la marque Lacoste. Membre des « Quatre Mousquetaires » avec Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra et Jacques Brugnon, il a remporté sept tournois majeurs en simple et a fait partie de l'équipe de Coupe Davis victorieuse en 1927 et 1928.  René Lacoste est né à Paris dans le 10e arrondissement, au 38 rue Albouy, fils de Jean-Jules qui devint dirigeant (administrateur délégué) de la firme automobile Hispano-Suiza, et fut décoré Chevalier (1917) puis officier (1925) et enfin commandeur (1932) de la Légion d'Honneur. Il fut aussi finaliste du premier championnat de France d'aviron à Mâcon, en 1890, et vainqueur du Championnat régional du Sud-Ouest. Il était le Président de la Société Nautique de la Basse Seine. Promis à de brillantes études et devant préparer Polytechnique, René Lacoste décide finalement en 1922 d'y renoncer afin de se consacrer entièrement au tennis.  Rene Lacoste en 1922. L'origine de son surnom, « le crocodile » varie selon les sources. L'explication la plus cohérente, tant du point de vue des personnes impliquées que du lieu et de l'année, est que ce surnom lui fut attribué par la presse américaine, à la suite d'un pari qu'il aurait fait en 1923 avec Allan Muhr, alors capitaine de l'équipe de Coupe Davis, à Boston. Une autre version, plus répandue, reprend l'histoire du pari, mais avec le capitaine Pierre Gilou. Sauf que ce même Pierre Gilou ne devint capitaine de l'équipe de France que quelques années plus tard, et surtout pas à Boston. L'histoire du pari est ainsi racontée : René Lacoste regardait dans une vitrine une valise en peau de crocodile; Pierre Gilou lui fit le pari de la lui acheter si Lacoste gagnait un match décisif. Le match fut perdu, mais l'image du crocodile perdura. D'autant plus que le tempérament de Lacoste correspondait bien à celui d'un crocodile: il ne lâchait jamais sa proie. Il a été l'un des « Quatre Mousquetaires » du tennis français avec Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra et Jacques Brugnon, et a remporté la Coupe Davis pour la France en 1927 et 1928. Sur le plan individuel, il a remporté à trois reprises les Internationaux de France de tennis (1925, 1927, 1929), deux fois le tournoi de Wimbledon (1925, 1928) et deux fois l'US Open (1926, 1927). Il fut désigné meilleur joueur du monde en 1926 et 1927. Associé à Jean Borotra, il compte également deux Internationaux de France en double en 1925 et 1929 et un Wimbledon en 1925. Il arrête le tennis en 1929 à seulement 25 ans en raison de problèmes de santé récurrents. En effet, depuis la Guerre, il est régulièrement victime d'insuffisance respiratoire.  René & Simone Lacoste in 1936 at Chantaco. From the Lacoste S.A. Archives. © All Rights Reserved. Il se marie le 30 juin 1930 à la golfeuse Simone Thion de La Chaume. Avant son mariage, René Lacoste résidait avec sa famille rue Armand-Silvestre à Courbevoie. Il fut par la suite propriétaire d'un logement dans les Immeubles Walter. En 1932, le capitaine Pierre Gillou le rappelle pour renforcer l'équipe de France de Coupe Davis contre les américains. Lacoste se remet à l'entraînement et atteint même les huitièmes de finale à Wimbledon. À quelques jours de la rencontre, il est cependant contraint de déclarer forfait en raison d'une angine. René Lacoste crée en 1933 la marque avec le logo issu de son surnom (crocodile) et vend l'année suivante des chemises de haute qualité au grand public. La production est arrêtée entre 1940 et 1946 à cause de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sont lancés en 1960 les polos rayés, puis l'eau de toilette en collaboration avec Jean Patou en 1968. René Lacoste débute ses activités d'industriel en fondant une marque de textile portant son nom dont le logo est un crocodile. Le produit est vendu en France dès l'année suivante, puis sera exporté en Europe et dans le monde entier à partir des années 1950. Lacoste était également un inventeur. Parmi ses inventions, on compte notamment une machine à lancer les balles en 1928, la pastille anti-vibration en 1960 (puis l'anti-vibrateur Damper en 1974) et la première raquette de tennis en acier en 1963 qui causa une révolution dans le domaine du tennis qui a mis en cause la suprématie de la raquette en bois et ouvert la voie aux modèles d'aujourd'hui.  Lacoste (à droite) et Otto Froitzheim. Il a été nommé officier de la Légion d'honneur en 1977, et président d'honneur de la FFT. Il est également membre du International Tennis Hall of Fame depuis 1976. René Lacoste meurt le 12 octobre 1996 à l'âge de 92 ans, un mois avant la victoire française de la coupe Davis 1996.  English Biography Jean René Lacoste ( 2 July 1904 – 12 October 1996) was a French tennis player and businessman. He was nicknamed "the Crocodile" because of how he dealt with his opponents; he is also known worldwide as the creator of the Lacoste tennis shirt, which he introduced in 1929. Lacoste started playing tennis at age 15 when he accompanied his father on a trip to England. His first participation in a Grand Slam tournament was the 1922 Wimbledon Championships in which he lost in the first round to Pat O'Hara Wood. Lacoste was one of The Four Musketeers with Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, and Henri Cochet, French tennis stars who dominated the game in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His breakthrough came in 1925 when he won the singles title at the French Championships and at Wimbledon, in both cases after a victory in the final against compatriot Jean Borotra. And he was ranked No.1 for 1926 and 1927. He won seven Grand Slam singles titles at the French, American, and British championships and was an eminent baseline player and tactician of the pre-war period. In 1929 he won his seventh, and last, Grand Slam singles title in France and then withdrew from competitive tennis due to failing health, including respiratory disease.  Simone de la Chaume On 30 June 1930 Rene Lacoste married golfing champion Simone de la Chaume. Their daughter Catherine Lacoste was a champion golfer and president of the Golf Club Chantaco, founded by her mother, at a few kilometres from St. Jean-de-Luz.  In 1933, Lacoste founded La Société Chemise Lacoste with André Gillier. The company produced the tennis shirt, also known as a "polo shirt," which Lacoste often wore when he was playing; this had a crocodile (often thought to be an alligator) embroidered on the chest. In 1963, Lacoste's son Bernard took over the management of the company.  In 1961, Lacoste created an innovation in racket technology by unveiling and patenting the first tubular steel tennis racket. When Lacoste died, the French Advertising agency Publicis, which had been managing his company's account for decades, published a print ad with the Lacoste logo and the English words "See you later...," reinforcing the idea that the animal was perhaps an alligator.  Further interest Louise Dahl-Wolfe (November 19, 1895 – December 11, 1989) was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland.  BiographyAmong the celebrated fashion photographers of the 20th century, Louise Dahl-Wolfe was an innovator and influencer who significantly contributed to the fashion world. Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was born November 19, 1895 in San Francisco, California to Norwegian immigrant parents being youngest of three daughters. In 1914, she began her studies at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Institute of Art), where she studied design, color and painting as well as taking courses in life drawing, anatomy, figure composition and other subjects over the next six years. After graduating, Dahl-Wolfe worked in designing electric signs and interiors. In 1921, Dahl-Wolfe met with photographer Anne Brigman, who inspired her to take up photography. She studied design, decoration and architecture at Columbia University, New York in 1923. Her first published photograph, titled Tennessee Mountain Woman, was published in Vanity Fair (U.S. magazine 1913–36). In 1928 she married the sculptor Meyer Wolfe, who constructed the backgrounds of many of her photos. From 1936 to 1958 Dahl-Wolfe was a staff fashion photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. She produced portrait and fashion photographs totaling 86 covers, 600 color pages and countless black-and-white shots. She worked with editor Carmel Snow, art director Alexey Brodovitch and fashion editor Diana Vreeland, traveling widely, and she would become a great influence on photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.  Harper's Bazzar's cover, June 1953, photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe She was also considered a pioneer of the 'female gaze' in the fashion industry, creating the new image of American women during the world war II: They were strong and independent. In 1943, Dahl-Wolfe photographed for the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar one of her as well as the magazine's most iconic photographs: The cover shows a young lady in front of the reception of American Red Cross Blood Donation clinic. She is styling chicly in an elegant navy suit, white blouse, black gloves, a cloche hat with long waves in her hair and holding a red bag with matching lipstick. The young woman looks either waiting to go inside to donate or about to leave the Red Cross blood donor room. The expression on her face is nonchalant with a suggestion that she does not attend the blood donation clinic regularly. Her eyes are empty. She may be disappointed or sad or helpless just as any other American woman knowing the reality is no one can escape. The audience can sense the uncertainty in the air of the time from her expression. The model in the cover was 18-year-old Lauren Bacall, who was a successful actress in Hollywood.  Lauren Bacall on cover of Harper's Bazaar, March 1943, photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe Dahl-Wolfe was known for taking photographs outdoors, with natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa in what became known as "environmental" fashion photography and later industry standard even now.  Red Parasol by Louise Dahl-Wolfe  photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for Harper's Bazzar, 1954 Her models pose candidly, almost as if Dahl-Wolfe had just walked in on them. Dahl-Wolf innovatively used color in photography and mainly concerned with the qualities of natural lighting, composition, and balance. Compared to other photographers at the time who were using red undertones, Dahl-Wolfe opted for cooler hues and also corrected her own proofs.   Natalie, Hammamet, photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe In 1950, she was selected for "America's Outstanding Woman Photographers" in the September issue of Foto. From 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals.  Throughout her career, one of Louise Dahl-Wolfe's favourite subjects was the model Mary Jane Russell, who is estimated to have appeared in about thirty percent of Dahl-Wolfe's photographs.  Mary Jane Russell photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1951  Mary Jane Russell photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe Although she worked all her life for fashion magazines, Dahl-Wolfe preferred portraiture to fashion photography. Notable portraits include: Cristobal Balenciaga, Cecil Beaton, Orson Welles, Edward Hopper, Colette and Josephine Baker.  Millicent Rogers portrait by Louise-Dahl-Wolfe, 1946  Cristobal Balenciaga portrait by Louise Dalhl-Wolfe, 1950 Louise Dalhl-Wolfe lived many of her later years in Nashville, Tennessee. She died in New Jersey of pneumonia in 1989.  The full archive of Dahl-Wolfe's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of her work.
 Dolores del Río Dolores Asúnsolo López Negrete (Victoria de Durango, 3 de agosto de 1904 - Newport Beach, California, 11 de abril de 1983), conocida profesionalmente como Dolores del Río, fue una actriz de cine, teatro y televisión mexicana. Dolores fue la primera estrella femenina latinoamericana en triunfar en Hollywood, con una destacada carrera en el cine estadounidense en los años 1920 y 1930. Es considerada también como una de las figuras femeninas más importantes de la Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano en los años 1940 y 1950. Fue reconocida como uno de los rostros más bellos que aparecieron en la industria fílmica de la época. Su larga y versátil carrera se prolongó por más de cincuenta años y abarcó cine mudo, cine sonoro, teatro, televisión y radio. Después de ser descubierta en México, Dolores comenzó su carrera cinematográfica en 1925 en Hollywood. Durante su etapa en el Cine mudo estadounidense, Dolores llegó a ser considerada la versión femenina de Rodolfo Valentino, una latín lover femenina. Tras la aparición del Cine sonoro, la actriz prosiguió su carrera en la industria fílmica estadounidense y participó en numerosas películas románticas, dramáticas y musicales. Cuando su carrera en Hollywood comenzó a declinar a principios de los años 1940, Dolores decidió regresar a México e incorporarse a la industria fílmica de su país natal, que en ese momento estaba en su apogeo. Cuando Dolores regresó a su país natal en 1943, se convirtió en una de las promotoras y principales figuras femeninas de la llamada Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano. Una serie de películas protagonizadas por Dolores en su país natal, bajo la batuta del cineasta Emilio Fernández, son consideradas obras maestras y ayudaron a impulsar la cinematografía mexicana alrededor del mundo. Durante el resto de la década de 1940 y a lo largo de la década de 1950, la actriz se mantuvo activa en el Cine Mexicano, aunque actuó también en Argentina y España. En 1960, Dolores regresó a Hollywood. Durante los próximos años, alternó su trabajo en el cine entre México y los Estados Unidos. Entre finales de los años 1950 y principios de los años 1970, la actriz desarrolló una exitosa carrera teatral en México y apareció en algunas series de televisión estadounidenses. Su último trabajo profesional como actriz lo realizó en 1978. Dolores del Río es una figura mítica del espectáculo en Latinoamérica y representación, por excelencia, del rostro femenino de México en el mundo entero.  "The two most beautiful things in the world are the Taj Mahal and Dolores del Río".  Dolores del Río en una foto publicitaria de 1961. La más bella, la más hermosa del oeste, del este, del norte y del sur. Estoy enamorado de ella al igual que cuarenta millones de mexicanos y ciento veinte millones de estadounidenses que no pueden estar equivocados.  Dolores del Río en peliula In Caliente, 1935 English: Profile Dolores del Río portrait, 1935. Dolores del Río (August 3, 1904 – April 11, 1983) was a Mexican actress, dancer and singer. With a career spanning more than 50 years, she is regarded as the first major female Latin American crossover star in Hollywood, with an outstanding career in American cinema in the 1920s and 1930s. She was also considered one of the most important female figures in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Del Río is also remembered as one of the most beautiful faces on screen of all time. After being discovered in Mexico, she began her film career in Hollywood in 1925. She had roles on a string of successful films, including Resurrection (1927), Ramona (1928) and Evangeline (1929). Del Río came to be considered a sort of feminine version of Rudolph Valentino, a "female Latin Lover", in her years during the American "silent" era. With the advent of sound, she acted in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to musical comedies and romantic dramas. Among her most successful films of that decade include Bird of Paradise (1932), Flying Down to Rio (1933) and Madame Du Barry (1934). In the early 1940s, when her Hollywood career began to decline, Del Río returned to Mexico and joined the Mexican film industry, which at that time was at its peak. When Del Río returned to her native country, she became one of the more important stars of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. A series of Mexican films starring Del Rio, are considered classic masterpieces and helped boost Mexican cinema worldwide. Of them stands out the critically acclaimed María Candelaria (1943). Del Río remained active mainly in Mexican films throughout the 1950s. In 1960 she returned to Hollywood. During the next years she appeared in Mexican and American films. From the late 1950s until the early 1970s she also successfully ventured into theater in Mexico and appeared in some American TV series. Del Río is now considered a mythical figure of American and Mexican cinema, and a quintessential representation of the female face of Mexico in the world.  "I have seen many beautiful women in here, but none as complete as Dolores del Río!" Biography María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López-Negrete was born in Victoria de Durango, Mexico on August 3, 1904, the daughter of Jesus Leonardo Asúnsolo Jacques, son of wealthy farmers and director of the Bank of Durango, and Antonia López-Negrete, belonging to one of the richest families in the country, whose lineage went back to Spain and the viceregal nobility. Her parents were members of the Mexican aristocracy that existed during the Porfiriato (period in the history of Mexico when the dictator Porfirio Díaz was the president). On her mother's side, she was a cousin of the filmmaker Julio Bracho and of actors Ramón Novarro (one of the "Latin Lovers" of the silent cinema) and Andrea Palma (another prominent actress of the Mexican cinema). On her father's side, she was a cousin of the Mexican sculptor Ignacio Asúnsolo and the social activist María Asúnsolo. Her family lost all its assets during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Dolores's father decided to escape to the United States, while she and her mother fled to Mexico City in a train, disguised as peasants. In 1919, a then 15-year-old Dolores saw a performance of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, whose interpretation influenced her to become a dancer. In 1921, aged 17, Dolores was invited by a group of Mexican women to dance in a party to benefit a local hospital. At this party, she met Jaime Martínez del Río y Viñent, son of a wealthy family. Jaime had been educated in England and had spent some time in Europe. After a two-month courtship, the couple wed on 11 April 1921. Their honeymoon in Europe lasted two years. Jaime maintained close ties with European aristocratic circles. In Spain queen Victoria Eugenie gave Dolores a photograph. In 1924, the couple returned to Mexico and decided to settle in Mexico City. But in early 1925, Dolores met the American filmmaker Edwin Carewe, an influential director at the First National studio, Carewe was fascinated by Dolores and invited the couple to work in Hollywood.  Dolores Del Río in film Ramona (1928) Del Río made her film debut in Joanna (1925), directed by Carewe and released that year. In the film del Río plays the role of Carlotta De Silva, a vamp of Spanish-Brazilian origin, but she appeared for only five minutes. In 1928, she was hired by United Artists for the third film version of the successful novel Ramona directed by Carewe. The film was a sucess and it helped her conversion to sound films. but her marriage with Jaime Martínez ended that same year. In 1930, del Río met Cedric Gibbons, an art director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of the most influential men in Hollywood, at a party at Hearst Castle. The couple began a romance and finally married on August 6, 1930. The del Rio-Gibbons were one of the most famous couples of Hollywood in the early thirties.  In 1933 she was cast in a musical comedy directed by Thornton Freeland: Flying Down to Rio starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In this film, Del Rio became the first major actress to wear a two-piece women's bathing suit onscreen.  Dolores Del Río dancing with Fred Astaire in film Flying Down to Rio (1933) Although Hollywood studio executives admired del Río's beauty, but her career did not interest them at a time when Latin stars had few opportunities to shine at the studio, and she was also put on a list entitled "box office poison", (along with stars like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and others).  Dolores del Río with Everett Marshall in film I Live for Love, (1935)  Dolores Del Río in film International Settlement (1938)  Dolores Del Río portrait by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1938 Amid the decline of her career, in 1940 Dolores del Río's met actor and filmmaker Orson Welles at a party organized by Darryl Zanuck. The couple felt a mutual attraction and began a discreet affair, which caused the divorce of del Río and Gibbons. She was at the side of Orson Welles during the filming and controversy of Citizen Kane (1941). The love affair ended unhappily in 1943 and Dolores del Río went back to Mexico.  Dolores del Río with Orson Welles in 1940. In Mexico, she filmed María Candelaria, the first Mexican film to be screened at the Cannes International Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix (now known as the Palme d'Or) becoming the first Latin American film to do so. In 1945 Dolores del Río filmed La selva de fuego by mistake as the film had been specially created for María Félix, another Mexican movie star of the day. Félix meanwhile, received the script for Dizziness (1946), a film originally created for del Río. When the two stars realized the mistake they refused to return the scripts. From this time the press began speculating a strong rivalry between del Río and Felix. In 1959, Mexican filmmaker Ismael Rodríguez brought del Río and María Félix together in the film La Cucaracha. The meeting of the two actresses, considered the main female stars of Mexican cinema, was a success at the box office. This same year, she married for the third time in New York to American millionaire Lewis A. Riley, whom she met in 1949 in Acapulco, Mexico. She remained with him until her death in 1983.  Dolores del Río portrait by Annemarie Heinrich, c. 1948 After 18 years Dolores Del Río returned to Hollywood and her first Hollywood role was the mother of Elvis Presley's character in the film Flaming Star (1960), and for the next 18 years, she worked both in films and tv shows, and her last film appearance was in The Children of Sanchez (1978).  Dolores Del Río with Elvis Presley in film Flaming Star (1960) In 1978, she was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, and in 1981 she was diagnosed with hepatitis B following a contaminated injection of vitamins. She also suffered from arthritis. On 11 April 1983, Dolores del Río died from liver failure at the age of 78, in Newport Beach, California. "Take care of your inner beauty, your spiritual beauty, and that will reflect in your face. We have the face we created over the years. Every bad deed, every bad fault will show on your face. God can give us beauty and genes can give us our features, but whether that beauty remains or changes is determined by our thoughts and deeds."  Dolores del Río's grave at Panteón de Dolores in Mexico City Dolores del Río always projected a special elegance with her beauty both on- screen and off-scree. She was considered one of the prototypes of female beauty in the 1930s. Women imitated her style of dress and makeup. She is also considered the pioneer of the two piece swimsuit. In 1952, she was awarded the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award and was called the "best-dressed woman in America". French couturier Jean Patou designed a dress inspired by her called Dolores.  Dolores del Río in two piece bathing suit  Dolores del Río in bathing suit  Dolores del Río(3 August 3 1905-11 April 1983) "I draped her naked body in jersey. She wanted no underpinnings to spoil the line. When I finished draping her she became a Greek goddess as she walked close to the mirror and said, It is beautiful. Gazing into the mirror, she said in a half-whisper, Jesus, I am beautiful. Narcissistic? Probably yes, but she was right. She looked beautiful".  Dolores del Río(3 August 3 1905-11 April 1983)  Dolores del Río(3 August 3 1905-11 April 1983)  Dolores del Río's star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame  María de los Ángeles Félix(8 April 1914 – 8 April 2002) was a Mexican film actress and singer. Along with Pedro Armendáriz and Dolores del Río, she was one of the most successful figures of Latin American cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Considered one of the most beautiful actresses of Mexican cinema, her taste for the finesse and strong personality garnered her the title of diva early in her career. She was known as La Doña, a name derived from her character in the film Doña Bárbara (1943), and María Bonita, thanks to the anthem composed exclusively for her, as a wedding gift by her second husband, the Mexican composer Agustín Lara. She completed a film career that included 47 films made in Mexico, Spain, France, Italy and Argentina  María de los Angeles Félix Güereña was born in Álamos, Sonora, Mexico on 8 April 1913. She was the daughter of a military officer and had fifteen siblings. She spent her childhood in Álamos but the Félix family moved later to Guadalajara. When María was 17, her beauty began to attract attention. She was crowned Beauty Queen at the University of Guadalajara. It was at this time that she met Enrique Álvarez Alatorre, a salesman for the cosmetics firm Max Factor. After a brief romance, the couple married in 1931. In 1935, Félix gave birth to her only child, Enrique, nicknamed Quique. Her marriage with Álvarez was unsuccessful and the couple divorced in 1937. After her divorce, Félix returned to Guadalajara with her family, where she was the subject of gossip and rumors due to her status as a divorcée. Because of this situation, Félix decided to move to Mexico City with her son.  When I want to, it will be through the big door."  In Mexico City, María Félix worked as a receptionist in a plastic surgeon's office, and one afternoon after work when walking down the street, director and filmmaker Fernando Palacios approached her and later persuaded her to break into the movies. Becoming her Pygmalion, Palacios began to train her and present her in film circles. She made her first appearance in the White and Black Ballroom of the Mexico City Country Club where some of the great Mexican movie stars of the era (Esther Fernández, Lupe Vélez, Andrea Palma) gathered. Eventually she was taken to Hollywood, to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, where she met Cecil B. DeMille, who offered to launch her film career in Hollywood, but Félix was not interested. She preferred to begin her career in her own country. And throughout her filming career, Félix has declined some of the most famous female roles Holloywood offered her: the female role of Duel in the Sun, which went to Jennifer Jones; the female lead in film The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart which later was played by Ava Gardner. Maria Félix was known as La Doña for her role in the movie Doña Bárbara (1943), based on the like-named novel by the Venezuelan writer Rómulo Gallegos. For the film, another actress (Isabela Corona) was already hired, but when Gallegos first saw Félix, he was charmed by her and said: "Here is my Doña Bárbara!".  Maria Félix in the film The Devil is a Woman(1950)/Maria Félix en la pelicula Doña Diabla (1950) In 1945 Maria Félix married famous Mexican composer Agustín Lara after a highly publicized relationship. Lara immortalized Félix in a number of songs, such as "Humo en los ojos" ("Smoke in the eyes"), "Cuando vuelvas" ("When you come back"), "Dos puñales" ("Two daggers"), "Madrid" and especially the famous theme "María Bonita", composed in Acapulco during their honeymoon. "María Bonita" would become one of Lara's most popular Lara songs. However, the relationship ended in 1947 due to Lara's jealousy. Félix said that Lara even tried to kill her in a fit of violent jealousy. In 1948 she was contracted by the Spanish film producer Cesáreo González and thus María Félix began her film adventure in Europe with the film Mare Nostrum (1948), directed by Rafael Gil.   Maria Félix in film La noche del sábado (1950)/Maria Félix en la película La noche del sábado (1950) In 1952, Félix returned to Mexico and concluded her working relationship with Cesáreo González with the film Camelia filmed in her native country. After her second divorce from Agustín Lara, Maria Félix had romances with some well-known men, including her "old enemy": the actor and singer Jorge Negrete. Unlike their difficult first meeting ten years ago on the set of El peñón de las ánimas, Félix found Negrete, in her own words: "surrendered to my feet". After a brief romance, the couple married in 1953. Unfortunately Negrete was already ill when the marriage took place. Negrete died eleven months later at a hospital in Los Angeles, California, while Félix was in Europe shooting La Belle Otero. Félix's appearance at his funeral, dressed in trousers, caused a huge scandal, which led Félix to take refuge in Europe. And the most important film of Félix in this period was French Cancan (1954) directed by Jean Renoir with the legendary French actor Jean Gabin.  Félix returned to Mexico in 1955. In 1956, Maria Félix married the Romanian-born French banker Alexander Berger This marriage lasted for 18 years, and she built her famous home, La Casa de las Tortugas (The House of Turtles), designed by Pepe Mendoza and resembling an Italian villa, in Cuernavaca.  In her prime times, Maria Félix was dressed by designers like Christian Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Balenciaga. The House of Hermès (Couture Department) designed extravagant creations just for her. She also liked to collect fine antiques, favoring pieces like her famous collection of Second French Empire furniture.   In the 1960s Félix's presence in the cinema was limited to only a few films. In 1970 she filmed La Generala, which would be her last film. The Mexican historical telenovela La Constitución (1971) would be her last professional acting job. Berger died in 1974 of lung cancer months after the death of María's mother, which plunged her into a deep depression. To overcome this depression, she developed a new passion: horses. Some of her horses won major international equestrian awards. Félix attempted to return to the cinema twice. First, in 1982, with the film Toña Machetes, and again in 1986 with the film Insólito resplandor. Neither project crystallized, and Félix never reappeared in film.  With Dolores I had no rivalry. On the contrary, we were friends and always treated each other with great respect, each with our own personality. We were completely different. She was refined, interesting, gentle on the deal, and I'm energetic, arrogant and bossy."  Maria Félix's last romantic relationship was the Russian-French painter Antoine Tzapoff. About him, Félix said: "I don't know if he's the man who has most loved me, but he's who has loved me better." María Félix died in her sleep on 8 April 2002, her 88th birthday in Mexico City. She was buried in her family's tomb alongside her son Enrique and her parents at Panteón Francés in Mexico City. In 2018, Google celebrated Felix's 104th birthday with a Google Doodle  Maria Félix and CartierMaria Félix was a jewelry connoisseur and had an extensive jewelry collection, including the 41.37 carat (8.274 g), D-flawless Ashoka diamond, and she had a very close relationship with Cartier. In 1968, she commissioned a serpent diamond necklace from Cartier Paris. The result was a completely articulated serpent made out of platinum and white goldand encrusted with 178.21 carats (35.642 g) of diamonds.  Maria Félix's Cartier necklace in the shape of two crocodiles, 1975 In 1975, Maria Félix again asked Cartier to create a necklace for her, this time in the shape of two crocodiles. The two crocodile bodies were made of 524.9 grams of gold, one covered with 1,023 yellow diamonds, while the other was adorned with 1,060 circular cut emeralds. Later she sold most of her jewelry back to Cartier's. She also left a Rolls Royce in Paris. Since Félix's death, these jewelry pieces have been displayed as part of The Art of Cartier Collection in several museums around the world. To pay tribute to the actress, in 2006 Cartier debuted its La Doña de Cartier collection. The La Doña de Cartier watch with reptilian links was created to impress by its wild look. The case of the La Doña de Cartier features a trapezoid shape with an asymmetrical profile reminiscent of a crocodile's head. The wristband of the watch resembles the contours of a crocodile in large, bold and gold scales. The La Doña de Cartier Collection also includes jewelry, accessories, and handbags.   Guido Reni self portrait Guido Reni (Bologna, 4 novembre 1575 – Bologna, 18 agosto 1642) è stato un pittore e incisore italiano, uno dei massimi esponenti del classicismo seicentesco. BiografiaReni è nato a Bologna, nell'attuale Palazzo Ariosti in via San Felice, da Daniele, musicista e insegnante della Cappella di San Petronio. Nel 1584, secondo lo storico Carlo Cesare Malvasia, che conobbe il pittore, abbandonò i suoi studi di musica, avviati da suo padre, per entrare nell'officina bolognese stabilita del pittore fiammingo Denijs Calvaert, come apprendistato destinati a un grande successo come Francesco Albani e Domenichino e sappiamo che ha studiato in particolare le incisioni di Dürer e Raffaello. Suo padre morì il 7 gennaio 1594, Guido lasciò il laboratorio di Calvaert per unirsi all'Accademia degli Incamminati. Nel 1598, già pittore indipendente, dipinse l'Incoronazione della Vergine e quattro santi, oggi nella Pinacoteca di Bologna, per la chiesa di San Bernardo, e vinse il concorso, in concorso con Ludovico Carracci, per la decorazione della facciata del Palazzo del Regimento, l'attuale edificio comunale di Bologna. La figura di Guido Reni è stata ripresa anche dallo scrittore tedesco Joseph von Eichendorff nel suo romanzo Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, la vita di uno stalker.  Portrait d’une dame à l’image de la Sibylle, Guido Reni Forse già nel 1600 ma certamente nel 1601 era a Roma, dove fu pagato dal cardinale Sfondrato per il suo Martirio di santa Cecilia della Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Nel marzo del 1602 tornò nella città natale per assistere ai funerali del grande Agostino Carracci e fu incaricato di incidere a stampa le decorazioni allestite per il funerale. Viaggiò da Bologna a Roma e di qui a Loreto, per trattare delle eventuali decorazioni della Santa Casa che furono però affidate al Pomarancio. È la sua ricerca del bello ideale, ricavato dal classicismo raffaellesco nella mediazione dei Carracci che sfiora soltanto la visione naturalistica di Caravaggio ma se ne allontana per la necessità di ammantarla di decoro; di questa esperienza, nel primo decennio del secolo, sono parte il Davide con la testa di Golia del Louvre, il Martirio di santa Caterina per la chiesa di Sant'Alessandro a Conscente, ora al Museo diocesano di Albenga in Liguria, La preghiera nell'orto di Sens e L'incoronazione della Vergine di Londra. Il 25 settembre 1609 ricevette il primo acconto per gli affreschi della cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore che interruppe alla fine del 1610, sembra per contrasti con l'amministrazione papale. Tornò a Bologna dopo il 1614, anno in cui terminò l'Aurora per il casino Rospigliosi (a Roma). La Strage degli innocenti e il Sansone vittorioso furono probabilmente iniziati a Roma e terminati a Bologna (venti scudi gli erano infatti anticipati a Roma per la commissione della Strage). Se il Sansone è un gigante effeminato che si ristora dopo il massacro, e i morti sembrano dormire placidamente nella serenità albeggiante di una vasta pianura, nell'altra Strage, rappresentata con sei donne, due piccoli morti e due assassini, la tragedia è congelata nella misura e nella simmetria della composizione raffaellesca. Di questo dipinto, suo capolavoro assoluto, si ricordarono Poussin, i pittori neoclassici francesi e persino Picasso, che richiamò la tela di Reni in alcune parti del suo Guernica. Tornò a Roma nel 1612, per terminare in aprile gli affreschi di Santa Maria Maggiore; il cardinale Scipione Borghese gli commissionò, per un Casino nel parco del suo palazzo, ora Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi, l'affresco dell'Aurora, terminato nell'agosto 1614. Dopo un breve soggiorno a Napoli, ancora a Roma ai primi del 1614, tornò definitivamente a Bologna nell'ottobre 1614. Al primo viaggio di ritorno da Roma, e ai dubbi sulla sua pittura, è dedicato il romanzo biografico Il viaggio di Guido Reni, scritto da Manlio Cancogni e vincitore del Premio Grinzane Cavour del 1987 (Lit, Roma, 2013).  Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni, 1615 Nel 1615 terminò di affrescare la Gloria di San Domenico nel catino absidale della nuova cappella barocca contenente l'arca del santo fondatore dell'ordine domenicano, che aveva iniziato due anni prima e subito interrotto a causa dei viaggi a Roma. I lavori che aveva in corso, in contemporanea e su grandi formati, sia a Roma che a Bologna, necessitarono da subito la collaborazione di colleghi, assistenti e giovani praticanti. Tanti furono i giovani pittori che ambirono ad essere considerati suoi allievi, partecipando attivamente alla vita delle sue diverse “stanze” oppure passandovi sporadicamente per cogliere qualche spunto dai suoi lavori in corso d’opera; per questo motivo Reni riservava ai suoi lavori più importanti ambienti appartati, per evitare plagi da parte di giovani di passaggio e per smorzare invidie tra gli assistenti più stretti. Nel maggio 1622 fu a Napoli, per affrescare la cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro nel Duomo ma non raggiunse l'accordo economico e ripartì per Roma, dopo aver dipinto tre tele per la chiesa di San Filippo Neri.  Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni, 1625, Museo del Prado Nel 1625 firmò e datò a Roma il Ritratto del cardinale Roberto Ubaldini, ora in una collezione privata inglese, e la grande pala barocca della Trinità per la chiesa dei Pellegrini, terminata a settembre e dipinta, secondo il Malvasia, in ventisette giorni. A questo periodo (1627) appartiene anche la celeberrima tela della Immacolata Concezione, oggi nella Chiesa di San Biagio a Forlì. Ritornò ancora a Roma nel 1627 per eseguire gli affreschi, commissionatigli dal cardinale Barberini, delle Storie di Attila in San Pietro; impose che nessuno – «né anco i cardinali» - salisse sulle impalcature durante i lavori e tuttavia non iniziò nemmeno e ripartì bruscamente per Bologna, per l'ostilità di alcuni cardinali e della gelosia del Gessi, suo ex allievo. Durante questa permanenza a Roma dall'ambasciatore spagnolo ricevette la commissione del Ratto d'Elena, ma non si accordò sul compenso e fu allora venduto in Francia a Monsieur de la Vrillière: è una fredda e decorativa scena da melodramma cortigiano, diversamente dal Ritratto del cardinale Bernardino Spada, conservato nell'omonima Galleria romana, donato dal pittore all'amico cardinale, legato pontificio a Bologna. Lo Spada è rappresentato con evidente simpatia e una resa vibrante di colori che ne esalta l'aspetto aristocratico e intelligente in un contesto di compostezza e decoro. Superata la tremenda peste del 1630, il Senato bolognese gli commissionò la pala votiva della Madonna col Bambino e santi, criticata dai contemporanei per la sua seconda maniera: schiarisce le tonalità, intridendole di argento, come si nota anche nella delicata Annunciazione di Ascoli Piceno. Prima del 1635 eseguì su seta, per il cardinale Sant'Onofrio, fratello del papa Urbano VIII, il San Michele arcangelo. Celebrato come esempio di bellezza ideale, il Reni, in una lettera, scrisse di aver voluto avere «pennello angelico o forme di Paradiso per formare l'Arcangelo o vederlo in Cielo; ma io non ho potuto salir tant'alto ed invano l'ho cercato in terra. Sicché ho riguardato in quella forma che nell'idea mi sono stabilita.» Fanno parte della produzione ultima le Adorazioni dei pastori di Napoli e di Londra, i San Sebastiano di Londra e di Bologna, la Flagellazione di Cristo di Bologna, Il suicidio di Cleopatra e La fanciulla con corona, entrambe nella Pinacoteca Capitolina e per ultimo il San Pietro piangente in collezione privata, che Alex Cavallucci e Andrea Emiliani collocano in questi ultimi anni di vita del maestro. Sono opere che il Malvasia definì incompiute: eseguite a pennellate veloci e sommarie, secondo un'intenzione stilistica che la critica, dal Novecento, riconobbe invece come consapevole scelta estetica. Per il suo biografo, a causa dei debiti, il pittore fu costretto negli ultimi anni «a lavorare mezze figure e teste alla prima, e senza il letto sotto; a finire inconsideratamente le storie e le tavole più riguardevoli; a prender denaro a cambio da tutti; a non ricusare ogni imprestito da gli amici; a vendere, vil mercenario, l'opra sua e le giornate a un tanto l'ora.» Sembra certo che soffrisse di depressione: «comincio a non piacere più nemmeno a me stesso», scrisse, e confessò di pensare alla morte «conoscendo essere vissuto assai, anzi troppo, dando fastidio a tanti altri, forzati a star bassi finch'io vivo.»  Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni, 1640 Il 6 agosto 1642 fu "colto da febbri" che lo portarono a morte il 18 agosto, a 67 anni. Il corpo fu esposto vestito da cappuccino e sepolto nella cappella del Rosario della basilica di San Domenico, per volontà del senatore bolognese Saulo Guidotti, legato al pittore da profonda amicizia. Accanto a lui giaceranno presto anche le spoglie di Elisabetta Sirani, figlia di Giovanni Andrea Sirani, suo allievo prediletto. È la sostanziale ambiguità della sua poetica ad aver fatto oscillare l'apprezzamento della sua opera nel tempo: fu esaltato dai contemporanei per l'armonia raggiunta nel coniugare il classicismo raffaellesco alle esigenze di verità poste da Caravaggio - esigenze naturalistiche del resto già sentite dal Reni fin dal tempo della sua frequentazione dei Carracci - e depurate dagli eccessi in nome del decoro e della ricerca del bello ideale. «Di tutti gli allievi dei Carracci è stato il più felice e ancor oggi si trova un'infinità di persone che prediligono le sue opere al punto da preferire la delicatezza e la grazia che manifestano alla grandezza e alle forti espressioni di altre» (Des Avaux, 1666) e Pierre-Jean Mariette, nel 1741, scrive che «la nobiltà e la grazia che Guido ha soffuso sui volti, i suoi bei drappeggi, uniti alla ricchezza delle composizioni, ne hanno fatto un pittore dei più gradevoli. Ma non si deve credere che sia giunto a questo senza essersi sottoposto a un intenso lavoro. Lo si vede soprattutto nei disegni preparatori di grandi dimensioni: ogni particolare è reso con assoluta precisione. Attraverso di essi si rivela un uomo che consulta continuamente la natura e che non fa alcun assegnamento sul suo dono felice di abbellirla.» Apprezzate nel Settecento anche le opere dell'ultima maniera dalle forme che si dissolvono nella luce, nell'Ottocento, a parte la stroncatura di John Ruskin, nel 1844, ("la religione deve essere ed è sempre stata il fondamento e lo spirito informatore di ogni vera arte. Mi assale una collera disperata quando sento che Eastlake compera dei Guido per la National Gallery"), intorno al Reni si fa silenzio quando non vi è il disprezzo per certe espressioni della sua pittura devozionale. Nel 1923 esce l'importante articolo di Hermann Voss sugli anni romani dell'attività del Reni, in cui lo studioso tedesco individua l'attenzione del bolognese alla pittura moderna di Annibale Carracci e dello stesso Caravaggio ma con un approccio da conservatore che "paralizza" la monumentalità dell'uno e il naturalismo dell'altro, tanto da suscitare l'entusiasmo di un Cavalier d'Arpino. «L'irresistibile incanto del Reni era ed è riposto nel sensuale fascino della sua cantilena in una sua tipica e inimitabile dolcezza musicale [...] il modo con cui lascia cadere una veste frusciante, con cui, grazie ad una semplicissima curva compositiva, fa risuonare e vibrare l'intera figurazione, ha qualcosa di sonnambulesco.» Non vi sono nel Reni nuovi pensieri e originalità compositive ma un semplice confrontarsi con la tradizione: la forza del pittore sta «nell'alto senso della bellezza e in quella musicalità del sentire che nobilitano ogni linea, ogni movenza.» Per il Longhi, nel Reni è acutissimo il desiderio «di una bellezza antica ma che racchiuda un'anima cristiana [...] spesso, da vero pittore e poeta, escogita gamme paradisiache [...] angeli soffiati in rosa e biondo [...] un anelito a estasiarsi, dove il corpo non è che un ricordo mormorato, un'impronta; un movente quasi buddistico, che bene s'accorda con l'esperienza tentata da Guido di dipinger sulla seta, a somiglianza, appunto, degli orientali.» Il suicidio di Cleopatra (circa 1625-1626), Bildergalerie (Sanssouci), Potsdam Una grande mostra a Bologna nel 1954 accentuò l'interesse critico per l'artista: per il Ragghianti, «il vero Reni ci si presenta come un artista rimasto, oltre ogni dottrina e bravura di prove, trepidamente adolescente, in un crepuscolo di esperienze che, come nella pubertà, avvolge il senso nella fantasia e gli dà quell'accensione fascinosa che dilata la realtà.» Per Cesare Gnudi, la poetica classicista fu dominante nel Reni, ed egli, pur identificando il suo ideale di bellezza con le immagini della mitologia classica, dovette mediare tale ideale con la realtà storica, politica e religiosa, cui aderiva, della Controriforma, e «fra il suo ideale di bellezza e il suo sentimento religioso già assestato in una quieta e accomodante pietà, egli non sentì forse mai un vero contrasto.» Non è vero che il vero Reni si troverebbe nell'evocazione di soggetti mitologici e un falso Reni si esprimerebbe nella convenzionalità dei suoi soggetti religiosi; se mondo classico e mondo religioso non contrastano fra di loro, tuttavia nemmeno si identificano e il Reni non sentì mai di dover scegliere: «La scelta non avvenne perché egli sentiva nell'uno e nell'altro mondo qualche parte vitale di sé. Non avvenne mai la rinuncia all'uno in nome dell'altro. Il dualismo restò così fino all'ultimo, continuamente composto e continuamente affiorante.» Negli ultimi anni «alla levitazione della forma materica farà seguito progressivo un disfacimento delle ultime vestigia naturali; la pittura andrà sempre più a decomporsi come una crisalide, lasciando emergere la struttura scarna e tuttavia persuasiva del progetto grafico sottostante. L'accelerazione è così evidente da far risuonare sotto le volte dello studio posto quasi in piazza Maggiore quel non finito che il Manierismo aveva portato al livello della metafora (l'impossibile a dire, a esprimere) che al contrario Guido intendeva come la sublime sprezzatura poetica dell'esprimibile toccato e colto nella pienezza dell'idea, del suo mondano travestimento.» (Emiliani). English Guido Reni Autorretrato self portrait Guido Reni ( 4 November 1575 - 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicholas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci. BiographyBorn in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the only child of Daniele Reni and Ginevra Pozzi. At the age of nine, he was apprenticed to the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Ludovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Lodovico's cousin Annibale Carracci to Rome. By late 1601, Reni had moved to Rome to work with the teams led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. During 1601–1604, his main patron was Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati. By 1604–1605, he received an independent commission for an altarpiece of the Crucifixion of St. Peter. After returning briefly to Bologna, he went back to Rome to become one of the premier painters during the papacy of Paul V (Borghese); between 1607–1614, he was one of the painters most patronized by the Borghese family.
Reni's frescoed ceiling of the large central hall of the Casino dell'Aurora, located in the grounds of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, is often considered his fresco masterpiece. The massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn (Aurora) bringing light to the world. The work is restrained in classicism, copying poses from Roman sarcophagi, and showing far more simplicity and restraint than Carracci's riotous Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne in the Farnese. In 1630, the Barberini family of Pope Urban VIII commissioned from Reni a painting of the Archangel Michael for the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini.The painting, completed in 1636, gave rise to an old legend that Reni had represented Satan—crushed under St Michael's foot—with the facial features of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj in revenge for a slight. Work in Naples and return to Bologna Returning to Bologna more or less permanently after 1614, Reni established a successful and prolific studio there. And in 1611 he had already painted for San Domenico a superb Massacre of the Innocents, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, which became an important reference for the French Neoclassic style, as well as a model for details in Picasso's Guernica. After leaving Rome, Reni alternately painted in different styles, but displayed less eclectic tastes than many of Carracci's trainees. For example, his altarpiece for Samson Victorious formulates stylized poses, like those characteristic of Mannerism. In contrast, his Crucifixion and his Atlanta and Hipomenes depict dramatic diagonal movement coupled with the effects of light and shade that portray the more Baroque influence of Caravaggio. His turbulent yet realistic Massacre of the Innocents (Pinacoteca, Bologna) is painted in a manner reminiscent of a late Raphael. In 1625, Prince Władysław Sigismund Vasa of Poland visited the artist's workshop in Bologna during his visit to Western Europe.The close rapport between the painter and the Polish prince resulted in the acquisition of drawings and paintings. By the 1630s, Reni's painting style became looser, less impastoed, and dominated by lighter colors. A compulsive gambler, Reni was often in financial distress despite the steady demand for his paintings. According to his biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni's need to recoup gambling losses resulted in rushed execution and multiple copies of his works produced by his workshop. Among the paintings of his last years are many unfinished works. Reni's themes are mostly biblical and mythological. He painted few portraits; those of Sixtus V, and Cardinal Bernardino Spada are among the most noteworthy, along with one of his mother (in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna) and a few self-portraits from both his youth and his old age. Reni died in Bologna in 1642. He was buried there in the Rosary Chapel of the Basilica of San Domenico. Reni was the most famous Italian artist of his generation.Through his many pupils, he had wide-ranging influence on later Baroque. In the center of Bologna he established two studios, teeming with nearly 200 pupils. His most distinguished pupil was Simone Cantarini, named Il Pesarese, who painted the portrait of his master now in the Bolognese Gallery. Beyond Italy, Reni's influence was important in the style of many Spanish Baroque artists, such as Jusepe de Ribera and Murillo. But his work was particularly appreciated in France—Stendhal believed Reni must have had "a French soul"—and influenced generations of French artists such as Le Sueur, Le Brun, Vien, and Greuze; as well as on later French Neoclassic painters. In the 19th century, Reni's reputation declined as a result of changing taste—epitomized by John Ruskin's censorious judgment that the artist's work was sentimental and false. A revival of interest in Reni has occurred since 1954, when an important retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted in Bologna. 
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida self portrait 1900
Joaquín Sorolla Bastida (Valencia, 27 de febrero de 1863 - Cercedilla, 10 de agosto de 1923) fue un pintor español. Artista prolífico, dejó más de 2200 obras catalogadas. Su obra madura ha sido etiquetada como impresionista, postimpresionista y luminista.
Biografía
Cuando apenas contaba dos años de edad, fallecieron sus padres, víctimas de una epidemia de cólera. Al quedar huérfanos fueron acogidos, su hermana Concha y él, por su tía Isabel, hermana de su madre, y su marido, de profesión cerrajero. Pasados los años, su tío intentó enseñarle, en vano, el oficio de la cerrajería advirtiendo pronto que su verdadera vocación era la pintura.
Estudió dibujo en la Escuela de Artesanos de Valencia. Al acabar su formación comenzó a enviar sus obras a concursos provinciales y exposiciones nacionales de bellas artes, como la de Madrid en mayo de 1881, donde presentó tres marinas valencianas que pasaron inadvertidas, pues no encajaban con la pintura oficial, de temática histórica y dramática. Al año siguiente estudió la obra de Velázquez y otros autores en el Museo del Prado. Tras visitar el Museo del Prado, Sorolla pintó en 1883 el lienzo inédito Estudio de Cristo, descubierto en 2012, donde se observa la influencia del Cristo crucificado de Velázquez. Comienza así su "etapa realista", siendo su profesor Gonzalo Salvá. Con su amigo, el también pintor Pedro Gil, se desplazó a París durante el primer semestre de 1885, y conoció de cerca la pintura impresionista, que produjo en él, ya de regreso en Roma, variaciones en su temática y estilo, llegando a pintar el cuadro religioso El entierro de Cristo, con el que no tuvo el éxito esperado. Tomó así contacto con las vanguardias europeas, destacando el impacto que le produjeron las obras de los pintores John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini y Anders Zorn. En 1888, contrajo matrimonio con Clotilde García del Castillo en Valencia, aunque vivirían un año más en Italia, esta vez en la localidad de Asís. 
Otra Margarita, 1892.
En 1889, el pintor y su familia se instalaron en Madrid y, en apenas cinco años, Sorolla alcanzaría gran renombre como pintor. En 1894, viajó de nuevo a París, donde desarrolló un estilo pictórico denominado «luminismo», que sería característico de su obra a partir de entonces. Comenzó a pintar al aire libre, dominando con maestría la luz y combinándola con escenas cotidianas y paisajísticas de la vida mediterránea.
Tras muchos viajes por Europa, principalmente Inglaterra y Francia, celebró una exposición en París con más de medio millar de obras, lo que le dio un reconocimiento internacional inusitado, conociéndose su obra pictórica por toda Europa y América. Hacia el verano de 1905 está en Jávea y realiza una serie de pinturas de niños desnudos, una de sus series más famosas y que le valieron el posterior encargo de la Hispanic Society of America. Uno de los cuadros más destacados de la serie es El baño, de 1905 y que pertenece a la colección del Museo Metropolitano de Nueva York. 
Clotilde con traje negro(Señora de Sorolla in Black), 1906, Joaquín Sorolla,Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Otra importante faceta que desarrolló en aquellos años fue la de retratista. Posaron para él personajes como Cajal, Galdós, Machado, su paisano Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, o políticos como Emilio Castelar, el rey Alfonso XIII, el presidente William Howard Taft, además de una buena colección de retratos de su familia y algunos autorretratos.
En 1914 había sido nombrado académico y, cuando terminó los trabajos para la Hispanic Society, trabajó como profesor de composición y color en la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Madrid. 
Retrato de Raquel Meller, 1918
En 1920, mientras pintaba en el jardín de su casa el retrato de la mujer de Ramón Pérez de Ayala, sufrió una hemiplejia que mermó sus facultades físicas, impidiéndole seguir pintando. Murió tres años después en su residencia veraniega de Cercedilla el 10 de agosto de 1923.
En 1932, su casa de Madrid fue reabierta como Museo Sorolla. Su principal discípulo fue Teodoro Andreu. 
Joaquín Sorolla fotografiado en 1909 por Christian Franzen
Biography
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (27 February 1863 – 10 August 1923) was a Spanish painter. Sorolla excelled in the painting of portraits, landscapes and monumental works of social and historical themes. His most typical works are characterized by a dexterous representation of the people and landscape under the bright sunlight of Spain and sunlit water.
Autorretrato/self portrait by Joaquín Sorolla
His first striking success was achieved with Another Marguerite (1892), which was awarded a gold medal at the National Exhibition in Madrid, then first prize at the Chicago International Exhibition, he soon rose to general fame and became the acknowledged head of the modern Spanish school of painting. His picture The Return from Fishing (1894) was much admired at the Paris Salon and was acquired by the state for the Musée du Luxembourg. It indicated the direction of his mature output.
Sorolla painted two masterpieces in 1897 linking art and science: Portrait of Dr. Simarro at the microscope and A Research. These paintings were presented at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Madrid in that year and Sorolla won the Prize of Honor. Here, he presents his friend Simarro as a man of science who transmits his wisdom investigating and, in addition, it is the triumph of naturalism, as it recreates the indoor environment of the laboratory, catching the luminous atmosphere produced by the artificial reddish-yellow light of a gas burner that contrasts with the weak mauvish afternoon light that shines through the window. These paintings may be among the most outstanding world paintings of this genre 
Portrait of Dr Simarro at the microscope, 1897, (Luis Simarro Legacy Trust, Fundación General, Complutense University)
An even greater turning point in Sorolla's career was marked by the painting and exhibition of Sad Inheritance (1899), an extremely large canvas, highly finished for public consideration. The painting earned Sorolla his greatest official recognition, the Grand Prix and a medal of honor at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and the medal of honor at the National Exhibition in Madrid in 1901. After this painting Sorolla never returned to a theme of such overt social consciousness.
Sad Inheritance, 1899. Crippled children bathing at the sea in Valencia; in the center the image of two children affected by polio (Bancaja Collection)
within the next few years Sorolla was honoured as a member of the Fine Art Academies of Paris, Lisbon, and Valencia, and as a Favourite Son of Valencia.
Although formal portraiture was not Sorolla's genre of preference, because it tended to restrict his creative appetites and could reflect his lack of interest in his subjects, the acceptance of portrait commissions proved profitable, Sometimes the influence of Velázquez was uppermost, as in My Family (1901), a reference to Las Meninas which grouped his wife and children in the foreground, the painter reflected, at work, in a distant mirror. At other times the desire to compete with his friend John Singer Sargent was evident, as in Portrait of Mrs. Ira Nelson Morris and her children (1911). But it was outdoors where he found his ideal portrait settings, thus, not only did his daughter pose standing in a sun-dappled landscape for María at La Granja (1907), but so did Spanish royalty, for the Portrait of King Alfonso XIII in a Hussar's Uniform (1907). For Portrait of Mr. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1911), the American artist posed seated at his easel in his Long Island garden, surrounded by extravagant flowers. The conceit reaches its high point in My Wife and Daughters in the Garden (1910), in which the idea of traditional portraiture gives way to the sheer fluid delight of a painting constructed with thick passages of color, Sorolla's love of family and sunlight merged. 
My Wife and Daughters in the Garden or "Mi Esposa e Hijas en el Jardín" which is the original name, 1910.
In 1911, Sorolla signed a contract with Archie Huntington to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. Huntington had envisioned the work depicting a history of Spain, but the painter preferred the less specific Vision of Spain, eventually opting for a representation of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and calling it The Provinces of Spain. Despite the immensity of the canvases, Sorolla painted all but one en plein air, and travelled to the specific locales to paint them: Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche, Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzcoa, Castile, Leon, and Ayamonte, at each site painting models posed in local costume. Each mural celebrated the landscape and culture of its region, panoramas composed of throngs of laborers and locals.
These 14 magnificent murals, installed to this day in the Hispanic Society of America building in Manhattan, range from 12 to 14 feet in height, and total 227 feet in length.The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919. 
Castilla or La fiesta del pan, 1913. First to be completed of Vision of Spain, 14 murals at the Hispanic Society in Manhattan.
Sorolla suffered a stroke in 1920, while painting a portrait in his garden in Madrid. Paralysed for over three years, he died on 10 August 1923. He is buried in the Cementeri de Valencia, Spain.
Walk on the Beach (Paseo a orillas del mar) 1909. Sorolla Museum, Madrid
After his death, Sorolla's widow, Clotilde García del Castillo, left many of his paintings to the Spanish public. The paintings eventually formed the collection that is now known as the Museo Sorolla, which was the artist's house in Madrid. The museum opened in 1932.
Sorolla's work is represented in museums throughout Spain, Europe, America, and in many private collections in Europe and America. In 1933, J. Paul Getty purchased ten Impressionist beach scenes made by Sorolla, several of which are now housed in the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1960, Sorolla, el pintor de la luz, a short documentary written and directed by Manuel Domínguez was presented at the Cannes Film Festival. The Spanish National Dance Company honored the painter's The Provinces of Spain by producing a ballet Sorolla based on the paintings. In the very successful Spanish TV series Gran Hotel produced by Bamboo Production, Helena Sanchís, the costume designer Joaquin Sorolla's artworks as her main inspiration and reference point for the design of the protagonists in the period drama. 
Alica and Julio, the the two main protagonists in TV series Gran Hotel
Further interest
Books
Websites
Museo Sorolla, Madrid, Spain
Videos
 Sheikha Moza bin Nasser at El Pardo Palace on April 25, 2011 in Madrid, Spain Sheikha Moza bint Nasser (Arabic: موزا بنت ناصر المسند, born in Al Khor, Qatar on 15 January 1959)is the consort of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former Emir of the State of Qatar. Since 1995, Sheikha Moza has led education and social reforms in Qatar and has founded national and international development projects. BiographyMoza is the daughter of Nasser bin Abdullah Al-Misned, a well-known opposition activist and the former head of the Al Muhannada confederation of Bani Hajer. Nasser returned to Qatar with his immediate family in 1977, the year in which his daughter Moza married Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, when he was heir apparent of Qatar.She received a BA in Sociology from Qatar University in 1986, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003.  Unlike many other monarchical wives in the Middle East, Sheikha Moza has been a high-profile figure in her nation's politics and society, actively involved in Qatar's government. She was a driving force behind Education City and Al Jazeera Children's Channel. She is the owner of Le Tanneur, a French leather-goods manufacturer. Additionally, she has been named as one of Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women at #75.   As the public consort of the emir, she has represented Qatar alongside her husband and on her own at many international events, including state visits and royal weddings. Sheikha Moza has become known for her personal style, customising haute couture designs to fit Qatari modesty rules. Fashion Trust Arabia (FTA), launched in September 2018 under the patronage of Sheikha Moza bint Nasser as Honorary Chair and co-Chaired by Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani and Tania Fares (Founder of Fashion Trust), is an initiative offering financial and business support to womenswear designers.  Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser al-Misnad and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy(Right) attend the ceremony of the Bastille Day, on July 14, 2008 in Paris.  Chairperson of the Education Above All Foundation, H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, meeting with President of France, Emmanuel Macron, at the Élysée Palace, in Paris, France, 2018 Jean Patou (27 septembre 1887 à Paris - 8 mars 1936 à Paris) est un couturier et fabricant de parfums français, créateur de la maison de couture et de parfums qui porte son nom.  Jean Patou au travail Biographie Jean Alexandre Patou est né le 27 septembre 1887 à Paris (10e arrondissement) Jean Patou travaillera un temps aux côtés de son père avant de se tourner vers l'un de ses oncles exerçant la profession de fourreur auprès duquel il apprendra le métier. Cette expérience lui révèle alors son intérêt pour la mode. En octobre 1905, Jean Patou s'engage dans l'armée pour trois ans. En 1910, il s'installe à Paris et décide d'ouvrir une maison de haute couture, au sein de laquelle il intègre un atelier de fourrures. En proie à des difficultés financières, cette première initiative se solde par un échec, mais Jean Patou réitère l'expérience en ouvrant en 1912 la « Maison Parry », un petit salon de couture situé au 4 rond-point des Champs-Élysées. Les débuts sont marqués par quelques balbutiements puisque Jean Patou ne suit pas totalement la mode contemporaine mais initie de nouvelles tendances tant par méconnaissance de « ce qui se fait » que par une vision avant-gardiste, la réception des modèles est alors aléatoire. Il en sera ainsi de sa première collection proposant de nombreuses vestes dans une époque où le goût privilégie les manteaux. Il n'empêche, bien que cette maison n'ait pas la prétention de s'élever au même niveau que les grands couturiers, Jean Patou parvient à séduire quelques actrices et demi-mondaines en proposant des modèles plus simples et moins onéreux que ses concurrents. En 1913, un acheteur américain connu comme « l'aîné Liechtenstein », venu pour acquérir quelques modèles, repart finalement avec l'entièreté de la collection, prouvant l'intérêt grandissant que suscitent les créations de Jean Patou. Réciproquement, cet achat consolide la Maison Parry et le maison et de l'installer dans un nouveau lieu, ainsi en 1914, il la transfère au 7 rue Saint-Florentin à proximité de la place de la Concorde dans un élégant hôtel particulier du xviiie siècle (il s'étendra par la suite au 9 et au 115). C'est à cette date que la maison prend le nom de Jean Patou & Cie et abrite tant l'atelier, les bureaux que les salons. À l'heure de la présentation de sa première collection, Patou est appelé au front, celle-ci ne verra alors jamais le jour. Après avoir participé à la Première Guerre mondiale comme capitaine dans un régiment de zouaves de l'armée d'Orient, basé aux Dardanelles, Jean Patou rentre à Paris en 1919 et relance véritablement l'activité de sa maison restée officieusement ouverte durant les dernières années. Du fait de la guerre, Patou développe une nouvelle vision des relations humaines qu'il va alors appliquer dans la gestion de sa maison. Depuis ses débuts, il s'était entouré de sa sœur Madeleine et de l'époux de celle-ci Raymond Barbas, auxquels s'ajoutent maintenant Georges Bernard responsable de la couture mais aussi Elsa Maxwell, figure de la « café society » dont le rôle sera de promouvoir l'image de la maison. Maurice Le Bolzer, son ordonnance pendant la guerre, devient par ailleurs son chef du personnel. Patou cherche à s'entourer, à collaborer pour se consacrer pleinement à son poste de directeur artistique tout en se nourrissant du travail en équipe. Il s'inquiète également du bien-être de ses employés et instaure de nouvelles conditions de travail : ainsi, ils bénéficient d'une mutuelle et à partir de 1920 de congés payés, enfin un système de délégués voit le jour au sein de la maison. Il organise des défiles de mode grandioses, avec spectacle musical. De 21 h à minuit défilent ainsi entre 200 et 300 modèles, devant un parterre d'actrices, de personnalités politiques ou du monde des affaires, assis autour de petites tables où on leur apporte du champagne, du foie gras et des cigarettes. Pour les acheteurs étrangers, en particulier américain, sont mis en place une présentation à part des créations de Patou, ces derniers acquérant les patrons contre rémunération, et les produiront dans leur pays en ajoutant le nom du couturier. En 1924, il part pour les États-Unis chercher des silhouettes plus conformes aux attentes des clientes américaines, plus sveltes. Jean Patou ouvre aussi des boutiques dans les villes françaises mondaines de l'époque, Deauville, Biarritz, Cannes ou encore Monte-Carlo. La crise économique de 1929 met un terme à l'expansion de la maison de couture, endettée, et Jean Patou doit fermer ses succursales de province.  Jean Patou et ses clientes, Jean Patou with his clients Dans la continuité de ses premiers modèles, Jean Patou entretient dans les années 1920 une ligne fluide et tubulaire empreinte de simplicité pour le jour tandis que les tenues du soir tout en offrant des matières soyeuses s'enrichissent de broderies, de drapés et bouillonnés pour jouer avec la lumière des dancings. Il n'empêche, en accord avec le désir de liberté des femmes et plus précisément de liberté de mouvement, ces tenues se voient raccourcies dévoilant davantage les jambes. Pour ces créations, Jean Patou puise dans le répertoire stylistique contemporain usant de réminiscences historiques : par la coupe, fluide pouvant évoquer les tenues antiques ou leur réinterprétation du début du xixe siècle, par les matières, vaporeuses et légères avec l'emploi de la mousseline évoquant ces mêmes périodes ou plus travaillées formant nœuds et coques pour suggérer les modes plus romantiques du xixe siècle, elles-mêmes se nourrissant des modes médiévales. Cette dernière inspiration s'illustre également par l'emprunt au vestiaire religieux à l'instar de la robe portée par Nicoleta Arrivabene lors de son mariage avec le comte Edoardo Visconti di Modrone le 28 novembre 1929 à Venise.  L'influence exotique est également de mise notamment pour les tenues d'après-midi et du soir afin de leur donner davantage de fantaisie. Cette tendance se déploie de bien des manières puisque de nombreuses cultures s'incarnent comme sources d'inspiration. L'exotisme russe se traduit par l'emploi de broderies dont certaines sont d'ailleurs produites par la société Kitmir fondée par la duchesse Marie Pavlovna de Russie, par la coupe rappelant les blouses traditionnelles ou plus simplement par certains noms de modèles tels Carina en 1922 ou Tatiana en 1924. Des étoffes employées telles que les velours de soie ou les lamés tout comme les coupes s'inspirant des caftans et capes ne sont pas sans rappeler l'influence du Moyen-Orient. D'autres motifs comme les médaillons ou plus distinctement ceux des chinoiseries, notamment visibles sur le modèle Nuit de Chine de 1922 évoquent bien entendu le pays homonyme. Enfin, certaines créations rappelant la coupe des kimonos et/ou des saris puisent respectivement dans le vestiaire japonais et indien comme le prouvent une collection de « pyjamas » des années 1930.  Avec ces sources d'inspiration, Jean Patou répond pleinement au goût de l'époque et surtout s'accorde avec la création contemporaine, cependant son avant-gardisme des années 1910 l'anime toujours. Il va ainsi s'illustrer dans la mode comme un créateur novateur, précisément grâce à sa compréhension des envies et des besoins latents. Patou comprend d'une part qu'avec l'essor des loisirs, du sport et des activités de plein air, un vestiaire plus adapté doit naître. D'autre part, sa proximité avec Raymond Barbas, son collaborateur mais aussi ancien champion de tennis, lui permet d'aller à la rencontre du monde sportif au sein duquel il comprend que, là aussi, un équipement plus adapté s'impose. Conscient de ces enjeux, Patou y répond tout d'abord en 1921 en habillant Suzanne Lenglen lors d'une compétition à Wimbledon. Celle-ci apparaît vêtue d'une jupe plissée s'arrêtant aux genoux, d'un chandail sans manches et d'un bandeau dans les cheveux, rangeant au placard les nombreux jupons longs, le corsage et le chapeau.  Qu'elle soit appréciée ou décriée, cette tenue « révolutionnaire » parvient à séduire la gent féminine, si bien que l'année suivante, à l'automne, Patou intègre pour la première fois dans sa collection une gamme de vêtements de sports et de plein air. Patou comprend très vite la nécessité de diversifier ce vestiaire, en proposant tant des modèles pour le tennis, le ski et le bain que pour les clientes non-sportives désireuses d'accéder à cette simplicité vestimentaire. De cette attente, Jean Patou va concevoir des robes, des jupes et des vestes pour celles qui veulent « avoir l'allure de » mais surtout il va innover dans leur conception. Diffusant largement le jersey offrant une aisance corporelle tout comme la jupe plissée, concevant une tenue complète avec sweater et gilet coordonnés — on parle alors de twin-set — mais aussi combinables entre eux, proposant une accessoirisation de ces ensembles avec des foulards assortis et usant d'un répertoire géométrique moderne évoquant le cubisme, Patou instaure à la fois un style sportif, élégant à la diversité vestimentaire élargie et une nouvelle manière de vivre le vêtement. L'engouement pour cette mode est telle qu'en 1925, est inauguré Le Coin des Sports au sein de la maison. Il crée aussi Le Coin des riens , où il propose des accessoires, des bijoux de fantaisie et de la véritable joaillerie. Jean Patou est également le premier à apposer sur ses créations un monogramme composé de ses initiales « JP ».  Robe Jean Patou, dress by Jean Patou En 1923, avec son beau-frère Raymond Barbas Jean Patou crée la division parfums de sa société de couture. En 1925 ils sont rejoints par le parfumeur grassois Henri Alméras, en tant que maître parfumeur. Jean Patou souhaitait un parfum phare pour sa maison. En 1930, Henri Alméras proposa alors une fragrance composée d'essences de rose et de jasmin dans des proportions particulièrement importantes: il fallait plus de 10 000 fleurs de jasmin de Grasse et 28 douzaines de roses (roses de mai de Grasse « Rosa centifolia » et roses de Bulgarie) pour obtenir trois centilitres de parfum. Le prix de cette composition rendait sa commercialisation très risquée alors que sévissait la crise économique qui suivit le krach de 1929. Mais Jean Patou fut séduit et lança la commercialisation sous la marque Joy et en utilisant le slogan particulièrement audacieux que lui avait suggéré son amie et conseillère, la chroniqueuse américaine Elsa Maxwell : Joy, le parfum le plus cher au monde (Joy, the most expensive perfume in the world)  Joy, the most expensive perfume in the world Amant de nombreuses femmes, il possédait la villa Casablanca à Biarritz, construite en 1922 par Guillaume Tronchet et rachetée à Paul Poiret. Jean Patou meurt prématurément en 1936 d'une crise d'apoplexie alors qu'il n'a que 48 ans ; il est inhumé au cimetière de Passy, 10e division.  Après sa mort, la maison de couture accueille plusieurs designers21 qui y font leurs débuts, comme Marc Bohan, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier ou même Christian Lacroix. Après le départ de ce dernier (appelé par le groupe LVMH pour créer la maison portant son nom), la maison de haute couture cesse ses activités pendant plus de trente ans, à partir de 1987. Pendant ce temps, l'activité parfums continue à se développer, d'abord au sein de la division « Prestige Beauté » du groupe Procter & Gamble de 2001 à juillet 2011 puis du groupe anglais Designer Parfums. En 2018, Jean Patou est racheté par le groupe LVMH, qui nomme Guillaume Henry (précédemment chez Carven puis Nina Ricci) à sa direction créative. La maison, rebaptisée Patou, présente sa première collection en septembre 2019.  Robe de lainage bleu marine(1959), Jean Patou English Biography Jean Patou, circa 1910 Jean Patou (27 September 1887 – 8 March 1936) was a French fashion designer and founder of the Jean Patou brand. Patou was born in Paris, France in 1887. Patou's family's business was tanning and furs.Patou worked with his uncle in Normandy, then moved to Paris in 1910, intent on becoming a couturier. In 1912, he opened a small dressmaking salon called "Maison Parry". His entire 1914 collection was purchased by a single American buyer.Patou's work was interrupted by World War I and he served as a captain in the Zouaves. Reopening his couture house in 1919, Jean Patou eradicated the flapper look by lengthening the skirt and designing sportswear for women and is considered the inventor of the knitted swimwear and the tennis skirt. He, notably, designed the then-daring sleeveless and knee-length cut tennis wear for French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen. He also was the first designer to popularize the cardigan and moved fashion towards the natural and comfortable. Jean Patou is credited with inventing the "designer tie" in the 1920s when men's ties, made in the same fabric as the women's dress collection, were displayed in department stores next to Patou's perfume counter.  Jean Patou and Charlie Chaplin in Canot Club near Bayonne (Jean Patou et Charles Chaplin au Canot Club près de Bayonne) In 1925 Patou launched his perfume business with three fragrances created by Henri Alméras. When the stock market crashed, so did the market for luxury fashion. The House of Patou survived through its perfumes. The best known of Patou's perfumes is "Joy", a heavy floral scent, based on the most precious rose and jasmine. it was created by Henri Alméras for Patou at the height of the Great Depression (1935) for Patou's former clients who could no longer afford his haute couture clothing line. "Joy" remained the costliest perfume in the world, until the House of Patou introduced "1000" (a heavy, earthy floral perfume, based on a rare osmanthus) in 1972. Joy remains the world's second best-selling scent (the first is Chanel No. 5).  Patou died prematurely in 1936. His sister Madeleine and her husband Raymond Barbas continued the House of Patou.  black dress by Jean Patou 1956, Photo Mc Laughlin Designers for the House of Patou have included Marc Bohan (1954–1956), Karl Lagerfeld (1960–1963) and Jean Paul Gaultier (1971–1973). Christian Lacroix joined the label in 1981. The last fashion collection produced by the House of Patou label was in 1987 when the haute couture business closed following Lacroix's departure to open his own house. After the closure of the haute couture business the company has continued to produce fragrances under the Jean Patou brand. Patou also produced fragrances for Lacoste, when Patou acquired the license in the 1960s, and Yohji Yamamoto in the 1990s  Further interest
Maria Montez
Perfil
María África Gracia Vidal conocida como María Montez (Barahona, República Dominicana, 1912 - Suresnes, Francia, 1951), La Reina Del Technicolor fue una cantautora dominicana que ganó fama y popularidad en la década de 1940 como una belleza exótica protagonizando una serie de películas de aventuras filmadas en Technicolor. Su imagen en la pantalla fue de la típica seductora que usaba vestidos con trajes de fantasía y joyas brillantes. Montez era conocida como "La Reina del Technicolor".
A lo largo de su carrera Maria Montez participó en alrededor de 26 películas, 21 de las cuales fueron rodadas en Estados Unidos y cinco en Europa. El apellido Montez lo tomó en homenaje a la bailarina Lola Montez. 
Maria Montez
Biografía
María África Gracia Vidal nació en la provincia de Barahona, República Dominicana, siendo la segunda de diez hijos del español Isidoro Gracia y la dominicana Teresa Vidal. Su padre se dedicaba a la exportación de madera y a la venta de tejidos.
A temprana edad, Montez aprendió a hablar inglés y fue educada en un convento católico de Santa Cruz de Tenerife. A mediados de la década de 1930, su padre fue nombrado cónsul español en Belfast, Irlanda del Norte, adonde la familia se mudó. Fue allí donde Montez conoció a su primer marido, William G. McFeeters, con quien se casó a los 17 años. En el libro Maria Montez, Su Vida de Margarita Vicens de Morales, edición de 2003, en la página 26, se puede ver una copia del certificado de nacimiento de María Montez, probando que su nombre original era María África Gracia Vidal. 
El 28 de noviembre de 1932 se casó con el banquero irlandés William McFeeters, quien era el representante del First National City Bank of New York en la provincia de Barahona y con quien estuvo casada casi siete años, hasta su partida a Nueva York.
Su primer trabajo fue posar para la portada de una revista por la suma de US$50 en Nueva York. Decidida a convertirse en una actriz de teatro, contrató a un agente y creó una hoja de vida que la hacía varios años más joven, poniendo en la fecha de nacimiento "1917" en algunos casos y "1918" en otros. Finalmente, aceptó una oferta de Universal Pictures, haciendo su debut cinematográfico en la película B Boss of Bullion City dirigida por Ray Taylor y protagonizada por Johnny Mack Brown. 
María Montez posando para una revista argentina en abril de 1944
Su belleza pronto la convirtió en la pieza central de las películas de aventuras en Technicolor de la Universal, en particular las seis películas en las que actuó junto a Jon Hall, como son Arabian Nights, White Savage, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Cobra Woman, Gypsy Wildcat y Sudan. Montez además apareció en la película Western Pirates of Monterey junto a Rod Cameron y en The Exile, esta última dirigida por Max Ophüls y protagonizada por Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
La identificación con esta imagen cinematográfica fue tal que María Montez era conocida como "The Queen of Technicolor" (La Reina del Technicolor). Mientras trabajaba en Hollywood, conoció al actor francés Jean-Pierre Aumont, con quien se casó el 13 de julio de 1943, pero éste tuvo que marcharse unos días después de su boda para servir en las Fuerzas Francesas Libres y luchar contra la Alemania nazi en el teatro europeo en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Al final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la pareja tuvo una hija, María Cristina (conocida como Tina Aumont). Luego se mudaron a una casa en Suresnes, en el suburbio oeste de París, durante la Cuarta República Francesa. En enero de 1951, Montez apareció en la obra l'Ile Heureuse ( La isla feliz) escrita por su marido. También escribió tres libros: Forever Is A Long Time, Hollywood Wolves I Have Tamed y Reunion In Lilith. De estos libros, sólo fueron publicados los dos primeros. Asimismo se dedicó a escribir una serie de poesías, entre ellas Crepúsculo, la cual ganó el 'Asociación The Manuscriters. Montez murió a los 39 años de edad, el 7 de septiembre de 1951, aparentemente debido a un ataque al corazón y fue encontrada ahogada en el baño de su residencia en Suresnes. Fue enterrada en el Cementerio de Montparnasse. En su tumba se muestra 1918 como su fecha de nacimiento, siendo 1912 la real. 
Profile
María África Gracia Vidal (6 June 1912 – 7 September 1951), known as The Queen of Technicolor, was a Dominican motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume adventure films. Her screen image was that of a hot-blooded Latin seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. She became so identified with these adventure epics that she became known as "The Queen of Technicolor". Over her career, Montez appeared in 26 films, 21 of which were made in North America and the last five were made in Europe.
Biography
María Montez was born María Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas (some sources cite María África Gracia Vidal or María África Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas as her birth name) in Barahona, Dominican Republic.She was one of ten children born to Isidoro García, a Spaniard, and Teresa Vidal, a Dominican of Criollo descent. Montez was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
In the mid-1930s, her father was appointed to the Spanish consulship in Belfast, Northern Ireland where the family moved. It was there that Montez met her first husband, William G. In 1932, María Montez married William G. McFeeters, a wealthy Irish banker. 
Montez was spotted by a talent scout while visiting New York. Her first film was Boss of Bullion City, a Johnny Mack Brown western produced by Universal Pictures. This was the first movie where she played a leading role and the only role where she speaks some Spanish
Her next film was The Invisible Woman (1940). It was made for Universal Pictures, who signed her to a long term contract starting at $150 a week. Universal did not have a "glamour girl" like other studios - an equivalent to Hedy Lamarr (MGM), Dorothy Lamour (Paramount), Betty Grable (20th Century Fox), Rita Hayworth (Columbia) or Ann Sheridan (Warner Bros). They decided to groom Maria Montez to take this role and she received a lot of publicity. Montez was also a keen self-promoter. In the words of The Los Angeles Times "she borrowed an old but sure-fire technique to get ahead in the movies. She acted like a movie star. She leaned on the vampish tradition set up by Nazimova and Theda Bara... She went in heavily for astrology. Her name became synonymous with exotic enchantresses in sheer harem pantaloons." She took on a "star" pose in her private life. One newspaper called her "the best commissary actress in town... In the studio cafe, Maria puts on a real show. Always Maria makes an entrance." 
In June 1941 Montez's contract with Universal was renewed. She graduated to leading parts with South of Tahiti, co-starring Brian Donlevy. She also replaced Peggy Moran in the title role of The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942). Public response to South of Tahiti was enthusiastic enough for the studio to cast Montez in her first starring part, Arabian Nights. She claimed in 1942 she was making $250 a week.
Arabian Nights was a prestigious production for Universal, its first shot in three-strip Technicolor, produced by Walter Wanger and starring Montez, Jon Hall and Sabu. The resulting movie was a big hit and established Montez as a star. 
Maria Montez in film Arabian Nights 1942
While working in Hollywood, Montez met French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. Aumont later wrote "to say that between us it was love at first sight would be an understatement".They married on 14 July 1943 at Montez's home in Beverly Hills. Charles Boyer was Aumont's best man and Jannine Crispin was Montez's matron of honour.
Maria Montez and her husband Jean-Pierre Aumont on their wedding ceremony
Publicity photography of Maria Montez for an Argentine magazine (1944)
Maria Montez publicity photo in 1944
According to Aumont "it was a strange house. You didn't answer the phone or read the mail; the doors were always open. Diamonds were left around like ashtrays. Lives of the Saints lay between two issues of movie magazines. An astrologer, a physical culture expert, a priest, a Chinese cook, and two Hungarian masseurs were part of the furnishings. During her massage sessions, Montez granted audiences."
Aumont had to leave a few days after wedding Montez to serve in the Free French Forces which were fighting against Nazi Germany in the European Theatre of World War II. At the end of World War II, the couple had a daughter, Maria Christina (also known as Tina Aumont), born in Hollywood on 14 February 1946. 
Maria Montez with her husband Jean-Pierre Aumont and their daughter Tina Aumont.
Montez said she was "tired of being a fairy tale princess all the time" and wanted to learn to act. She fought with Universal for different parts. She was suspended for refusing the lead in Frontier Gal.
In 1946 Montez visited France with Aumont and both became excited about the prospect of making movies there. Aumont says they were determined to get out of their respective contracts in Hollywood and move. In August 1947 Universal refused to pick up their option on Montez' services and she went freelance. 
Montez and Aumont formed their own production company, Christina Productions.They moved to a home in Suresnes, Île-de-France in the western suburb of Paris under the French Fourth Republic. According to Aumont, they were going to star in Orpheus (1950) which Aumont says Jean Cocteau wrote for him and Montez. However the filmmaker decided to use other actors.
Instead, in July 1948 Montez and Aumont made Wicked City (1949) for Christina Productions with Villiers directing and Aumont contributing to the script. It was one of the first US-French co productions after the war. 
In 1949 Aumont announced that they would get divorced but they remained together until Montez's death.
Aumont had begun writing plays and Montez appeared in a one-woman production, L'lle Heureuse ("The Happy Island"). Reviews were poor. After that, Montez made several films, none of them successful. then she made a movie with her husband, Revenge of the Pirates (1951). It would be the last film she ever made. Montez also wrote three books, two of which were published, as well as penning a number of poems. 
The 39-year-old Montez died in Suresnes, France on 7 September 1951 after apparently suffering a heart attack and drowning while taking a hot bath.
She was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris where her tombstone gives her amended year of birth (1918), not the actual year of birth (1912). 
In the book, Maria Montez, Su Vida by Margarita Vicens de Morales, there is a copy of Montez's birth certificate proving that her original name was Maria Africa Gracia Vidal.
There is also a copy of a fake biography made by Universal Pictures, where it says that Montez was educated in Tenerife and that she lived in Ireland, which was never true. Instead, it claims that Montez lived the first 27 years of her life in the Dominican Republic. She left the bulk of her $200,000 estate ($2 million today) to her husband and their five-year-old daughter. 
Maria Montez's tombstone in Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris
Further reading
Books
 
Websites
Maria Montez fan site 
Profile of Lee Miller
Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), was an American model, photographer and photojournalist. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris.
A woman's Solarised portrait (Meret Oppenheim?) photo by Lee Miller, Paris, 1930
Biography of Lee Miller
Childhood, New York
Lee Miller was born on April 23, 1907, in New York. Her father was of German descent, and her mother of Scottish and Irish descent. Theodore always favored Lee. In her childhood, Miller experienced issues in her formal education, being expelled from almost every school she attended. In 1925, at the age of eighteen, Miller moved to Paris where she studied lighting, costume and design at the Ladislas Medgyes' School of Stagecraft. She returned to New York in 1926 and joined an experimental drama programme at Vassar College then enrolled in the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan to study life drawing and painting..
Become model
At 19 Lee Miller nearly stepped in front of a car on a Manhattan street but was saved by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue. This incident helped launch her modeling career.
she appeared on the cover of Vogue on March 15, 1927. Miller's look was exactly what Vogue's then editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase was looking for to represent the emerging idea of the "modern girl." For the next two years, Miller was one of the most sought-after models in New York, photographed by leading fashion photographers including Edward Steichen, Arnold Genthe, Nickolas Muray and George Hoyningen-Huene. A photograph of Miller by Steichen was used to advertise Kotex menstrual pads, without her consent, effectively ending her career as a fashion model. She was hired by a fashion designer in 1929 to make drawings of fashion details in Renaissance paintings but she found photography more efficient. 
Lee Miller in Chanel by Edward Steichen, 1928
Lee Miller by Man Ray, 1929
1929, Photographer, Man Ray, Paris
In 1929, Lee Miller traveled to Paris with the intention of apprenticing herself to the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray but soon Miller soon became his model and collaborator, as well as his lover and muse. While she was in Paris, she began her own photographic studio, often taking over Ray's fashion assignments to enable him to concentrate on his painting. So closely did they collaborate that photographs taken by Miller during this period are credited to Ray.
Together with Ray, she rediscovered the photographic technique of solarisation, through an accident variously described, with one of Miller's accounts involving a mouse running over her foot, causing her to switch on the light in mid-development.
Amongst Miller's circle of friends were Pablo Picasso and fellow Surrealists Paul Éluard and Jean Cocteau, the latter of whom was so mesmerized by Miller's beauty that he coated her in butter and transformed her into a plaster cast of a classical statue for his film, The Blood of a Poet (1930).
Photography is perfectly suited to women as a profession...it seems to me that women have a bigger chance at success in photography than men...women are quicker and more adaptable than men. And I think they have an intuition that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men."
1932, Photographer, New York
In 1932, Lee Miller returned to New York City and established a portrait and commercial photography studio with her brother Erik as her darkroom assistant.
Clients of the Lee Miller Studio included BBDO, Henry Sell, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, Saks Fifth Avenue, I. Magnin and Co., and Jay Thorpe. During 1932 Miller was included in the Modern European Photography exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York and in the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition International Photographers with László Moholy-Nagy, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, Charles Sheeler, Ray, and Edward Weston. In response to the exhibition, Katherine Grant Sterne wrote a review in Parnassus in March 1932, noting that Miller "has retained more of her American character in the Paris milieu. The very beautiful Bird Cages at Brooklyn; the study of a pink-nailed hand embedded in curly blond hair which is included in both the Brooklyn and the Julien Levy show; and the brilliant print of a white statue against a black drop, illumine the fact rather than distort it." In 1933, Julien Levy gave Miller the only solo exhibition of her life. Among her portrait clients were the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell, actresses Lilian Harvey and Gertrude Lawrence. 
1934, marriage, Cairo, Egypt
In 1934, Miller abandoned her studio to marry the Egyptian businessman and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey, who had come to New York City to buy equipment for the Egyptian National Railways. Although she did not work as a professional photographer during this period, the photographs she took while living in Egypt with Eloui, including Portrait of Space, are regarded as some of her most striking surrealist images.
In Cairo, Miller took a photograph of the desert near Siwa that Magritte saw and used as inspiration for his 1938 painting "Le Baiser." Miller also contributed an object to the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition at the London Gallery in 1934.
1940s, Photojournalist, USA, France
In 1937, Miller returned to Paris, where she met the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose.
Four of her photographs ("Egypt" (1939), "Roumania" (1938), "Libya" (1939), and "Sinai" (1939)) were displayed at the 1940 exhibition Surrealism To-Day at the Zwemmer Gallery in London, and she herself moved to London to live with Roland Penrose. When the Second World War broke out, Lee Miller returned to the US and embarked on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the Blitz. 
She teamed up with the American photographer David E. Scherman, a Life correspondent on many assignments. Scherman's photograph of Miller lying in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler's apartment in Munich, with its shower hose looped in the center behind her head, resembling a noose, is one of the most iconic images from the Miller–Scherman partnership.
Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, Munich, 1945
Della Oake, by Lee Miller, 1950
Della Oake, by Lee Miller, 1950
1947, Motherhood, second marriage, Farley Farm House
In 1946, Lee Miller found herself pregnant by Penrose, she divorced her husband Bey and on May 3, 1947 married Penrose. Their son, Antony Penrose, was born in September 1947.
In 1949, the couple bought Farley Farm House in Chiddingly, East Sussex. During the 1950s and 1960s, Farley Farm became a sort of artistic Mecca for visiting artists such as Picasso, Ray, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Jean Dubuffet, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst. While Miller continued to do the occasional photo shoot for Vogue, she soon discarded the darkroom for the kitchen, becoming a gourmet cook. According to her housekeeper Patsy, she specialized in "historical food" like roast suckling pig as well as treats such as marshmallows in a cola sauce (especially made to annoy English critic Cyril Connolly who told her Americans didn't know how to cook). She also provided photographs for her husband's biographies on Picasso and Antoni Tàpies. However, images from the war, especially the concentration camps, continued to haunt her and she started on what her son later described as a "downward spiral".
1977, death
Miller died of cancer at Farley Farm House in 1977, aged 70. She was cremated, and her ashes were spread through her herb garden at Farley.
Miller's work has served as inspiration for Gucci's Frida Giannini, Ann Demeulemeester and Alexander McQueen. Further reading
Articles and websites
Books
 Diane von Fürstenberg, the woman who created the wrap dress Profile of Diane von Fürstenberg Diane von Fürstenberg, formerly Princess Diane of Fürstenberg (German: Diane Prinzessin zu Fürstenberg; born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin; December 31, 1946), is a Belgian fashion designer best known for her wrap dress. She initially rose to prominence when she married into the German princely House of Fürstenberg, as the wife of Prince Egon von Fürstenberg. Following their separation in 1973 and divorce in 1983[citation needed], she has continued to use his family name. Her fashion company, Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) is available in over 70 countries and 45 free-standing shops worldwide, with the company's headquarters and flagship boutique located in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. She is president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a position she has held since 2006; in 2014 was listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes; and in 2015 was included in the Time 100, as an Icon, by Time Magazine. In 2016, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from The New School.  Diane von Fürstenberg, the woman who created the wrap dress Biography of Diane von Fürstenberg Diane von Fürstenberg was born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin in Brussels, Belgium to Jewish parents. And 18 months before Fürstenberg was born, her mother, the Greek-born Liliane Nahmias was a prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp. Fürstenberg has spoken broadly about her mother's influence in her life, crediting her with teaching her that "fear is not an option". Fürstenberg attended a boarding school in Oxfordshire. She studied at Madrid University before transferring to the University of Geneva to study economics. At university, when she was 18, she met Prince Egon von Fürstenberg, the elder son of Prince Tassilo zu Fürstenberg, a German Roman Catholic prince, and his first wife, Clara Agnelli, an heiress to the Fiat automotive fortune and member of the Italian nobility. She then moved to Paris and worked as an assistant to fashion photographer's agent Albert Koski. She left Paris for Italy to apprentice to the textile manufacturer Angelo Ferretti in his factory, where she learned about cut, color and fabric. It was here that she designed and produced her first silk jersey dresses.  Diane Simone Michelle Halfin with Prince Egon von Fürstenberg Diane Simone Michelle Halfin married Egon von Fürstenberg in 1969 and became Her Serene Highness Princess Diane of Fürstenberg. A year after marrying, Fürstenberg began designing women's clothes: After moving to New York, she met high-profile Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, who declared her designs "absolutely smashing". She had her name listed on the Fashion Calendar for New York Fashion Week, and so her business was created. In 1973, Diane von Fürstenbergs separated from her husband Egon von Fürstenberg. In 1974, she introduced the knitted jersey "wrap dress", an example of which, due to its influence on women's fashion, is in the collection of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After the success of the wrap dress, Furstenberg was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 1976. The accompanying article declared her "the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel." She launched a cosmetic line and her first fragrance, "Tatiana", named after her daughter. The New York Times reported that by 1979 the annual retail sales for the company were $150 million.   In 1983, Diane von Fürstenbergs and Egon von Fürstenberg divorced and two years later, Fürstenberg moved to Paris, France where she founded Salvy, a French-language publishing house. Fürstenberg started a number of other businesses including a line of cosmetics and a home-shopping business, which she launched in 1991. In 1992, Fürstenberg sold $1.2 million dollars of her Silk Assets collection in two hours on QVC. Fürstenberg relaunched her company in 1997, and reintroduced the wrap dress, which gained traction with a new generation of women. In 1998, she published her business memoir, Diane: A Signature Life.  Diane von Fürstenbergs with her second husband Barry Diller In 2001, Diane von Fürstenberg married American media mogul Barry Diller, and she built The Diller – von Furstenberg Family Foundation with her husband for which she serves as director. It provides support to nonprofit organizations in the area of community building, education, human rights, arts, health and the environment. The foundation supports The DVF Awards, presented annually to four women who display leadership, strength and courage in their commitment to women's causes. In 2011, the foundation made a $20 million commitment to the High Line. In 2004, Diane von Fürstenbergs introduced the DVF by H. Stern fine jewelry collection, and launched scarves and beachwear. In 2006, she was elected as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a position she still holds. In 2008, she received a star on Seventh Avenue's Fashion Walk of Fame In 2009, Michelle Obama wore the DVF signature Chain Link print wrap dress on the official White House Christmas card. That same year, a large-scale retrospective exhibition entitled "Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress" opened at the Manezh, one of Moscow's largest public exhibition spaces. It was curated by Andre Leon Talley and attracted a lot of media attention. In 2010, the exhibition traveled to São Paulo; and in 2011, to the Pace Gallery in Beijing. In 2010, Fürstenberg was awarded a Gold Medal at the annual Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Gold Medal Gala. In 2011, DVF introduced a home collection, and a signature fragrance, DIANE. In 2012, Fürstenberg launched her first children’s collection with GapKids and a denim collaboration with CURRENT/ELLIOTT.  Her clothes have been worn by many celebrities including Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Madonna, Tina Brown, Jessica Alba, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez. Google Glass made its New York Fashion Week Debut at the designer's Spring 2013 fashion show.  Kate Middleton wearing DVF wrap dress In 2018, the brand banned mohair use after a PETA exposé showed workers mutilating and killing goats to obtain it. All fur, angora and exotic skins were also banned from future collections. Further reading
Video
Profile of Tao Porchon-Lynch
Tao Porchon-Lynch (born Täo Andrée Porchon, August 13, 1918 — February 21, 2020) was an American yoga master and award-winning author of French and Indian descent. She discovered yoga in 1926 when she was eight years old in India and studied with, among others, Sri Aurobindo and Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, Swami Prabhavananda, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Even at age 101, she still taught a weekly class in New York, and led programs across the globe.
She was the author of two books, including her autobiography, Dancing Light: The Spiritual Side of Being Through the Eyes of a Modern Yoga Master, which won a 2016 IPPY Award and three 2016 International Book Awards. In the front matter endorsement, Deepak Chopra said: "One of the most acclaimed yoga teachers of our century, Tao Porchon-Lynch... is a mentor to me who embodies the spirit of yoga and is an example of Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. Like yoga, she teaches us to let go and to have exquisite awareness in every moment." She was the recipient of India's highly prestigious award Padma Shri in 2019 for her excellent work in the field of Yoga. 
Biography of Tao Porchon-Lynch
Tao Porchon-Lynch was born on August 13, 1918, on a ship in the middle of the English Channel, two months premature. Her father was from France, while her mother was a native Indian (Manipuri) Her mother died when Tao was seven months old and she was raised by her aunt and uncle. Her uncle, who designed railroads, often brought her along for trips around Asia, travelling as far as Singapore. The family owned vineyards in the wine region of the Rhône River Valley, located in Southern France.
At age eight, Tao witnessed a group of youthful yoga practitioners exercising on a beach. This encounter got Porchon interested in yoga, who stated in an interview with Guinness World Records, "I wanted to do the amazing things that they were doing with their bodies." Going against the advice of her aunt, who remarked that yoga was meant predominantly for males, she started practising yoga, although she did not get involved in it professionally until much later in her life. 
Model, dancer and actress
In her early career, Porchon worked in the fashion industry. She found success as a model and won several titles, including "Best Legs in Europe". For a period of time she was signed under the Lever Brothers. She travelled around the globe modeling in such cities as Paris.
During the Second World War, Porchon moved to London and became a cabaret performer under the mentorship of Noël Coward. Notable journalist Quentin Reynolds took note of Porchon, writing that she made a "dark London brighter". Porchon-Lynch grew up speaking French and Meiteilon. Thus, she had to overcame the language barrier learning English. After the war died down, she relocated to the United States, where she got a job as an actress under Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, appearing in various Hollywood motion pictures, including Show Boat (1951), also featuring Kathryn Grayson, and The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), in which she co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor. During her career as an actress, she frequently gave free yoga sessions to her fellow actors and actresses. She was also featured in the documentary If You’re Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast, a television film which premiered in 2017. 
Yoga teacher
Tao Porchon-Lynch was married to Bill Lynch around 1962, and in 1967 she abandoned her acting job, deciding to become a full-time yogi.
In the same year, Porchon-Lynch assisted in the establishment of the American Wine Society (AWS) with her spouse. When it split into different branches across the United States, she was selected in 1970 to be the Vice-President of the AWS in Southern New York. She also frequently appeared as part of the judging panel in various wine competitions. She later became the publisher and editor-in-chief of the wine appreciation magazine, The Beverage Communicator, distributed by the AWS. With her fellow yoga practitioners, Porchon-Lynch organized annual wine appreciation trips to France. In 1976, she became one of the founders of the Yoga Teachers Alliance, now known as the Yoga Teachers Association. In 1982 her husband died and she set up the Westchester Institute of Yoga in New York, which has students from all over the world. In 1995, with Indra Devi, she flew to Israel to attend the Yoga for Peace International Peace Conference. Porchon-Lynch has also been one of B. K. S. Iyengar's disciples in yoga and reportedly the first "foreign" student of his. 
Porchon-Lynch has embraced her age and carried her yoga with her. She has mentioned, "I'm going to teach yoga until I can't breathe anymore." She received the Guinness World Records title of world's oldest yoga teacher from Berniece Bates in May 2012. Porchon-Lynch was 93 when she broke the world record. In 2013, in collaboration with Tara Stiles, she released a DVD on yoga, titled Yoga with Tao Porchon-Lynch. In addition, she published a book about meditation, titled Reflections: The Yogic Journey of Life.
In 2016, Tao Porchon-Lynch received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Pioneer Award at the United Nations in recognition of her achievements in the sports world. 
Ballroom dancer and meditator
Outside of yoga, Porchon-Lynch continued to involve herself in competitive dancing, particularly in ballroom tango. She had several hundred first-place titles in competitive dancing. Her youngest dance partners were Hayk Balasanyan, Vard Margaryan and Anton Bilozorov.
In her spare time, Porchon-Lynch enjoyed meditating. In August 2014, she still drove her Smart car. 
Death
According to her representative, Tao Porchon-Lynch taught her last yoga class on 16 Febrary 2020, and passed away peacefully on the morning of 21 Febrary, 2020.
Further reading
Articles
Books
 Profile of Novak Djokovic Novak Djokovic is a Serbian professional tennis player who is currently ranked world No. 1 in men's singles tennis by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Djokovic has won 17 Grand Slam singles titles, the third-most in history for a male player, five ATP Finals titles, 34 ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles, 13 ATP Tour 500 titles, and has held the No. 1 spot in the ATP rankings for over 275 weeks. In majors, he has won a record eight Australian Open titles, five Wimbledon titles, three US Open titles, and one French Open title. By winning the 2016 French Open, he became the eighth player in history to achieve the Career Grand Slam and the third man to hold all four major titles at once, the first since Rod Laver in 1969 and the first ever to do so on three different surfaces.He is the only male player to have won all nine of the Masters 1000 tournaments.Djokovic was also a member of Serbia's winning Davis Cup team in 2010 and in the 2020 ATP Cup. Djokovic is the first Serbian player to be ranked No. 1 by the ATP and the first male player representing Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles title. He is a six-time ITF World Champion and a five-time ATP year-end No. 1 ranked player. Djokovic has won numerous awards, including the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year (four times)and the 2011 BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year award. He is also a recipient of the Order of St. Sava, the Order of Karađorđe's Star, and the Order of the Republika Srpska.  Biography of Novak Djokovic  Novak Djokovic (Nole) was born on 22 May 1987 in Belgrade, SR Serbia, Yugoslavia. He is of paternal Serbian and maternal Croatian descent. His two younger brothers, Marko and Djordje, have also played professional tennis. Djokovic began playing tennis at the age of four. In the summer of 1993, the six-year-old was spotted by Yugoslav tennis player Jelena Genčić at Mount Kopaonik, where Djokovic's parents ran a fast-food parlour.Upon seeing the child Djokovic playing tennis, she stated: "This is the greatest talent I have seen since Monica Seles." Genčić worked with young Djokovic over the following six years and helped him move to the Pilić tennis academy in Oberschleißheim, Germany where 12 year old Djokovic spent four years there. At the age of 14, he began his international career, winning European championships in singles, doubles, and team competition. Djokovic turned professional in 2003 by entering the ATP World Tour. Djokovic made his first Grand Slam tournament appearance by qualifying for the 2005 Australian Open, where he was defeated by eventual champion Marat Safin in the first round in straight sets  In 2008, Djokovic won his first major title in Australian Open, marking the first time since the 2005 Australian Open that a Grand Slam singles title was not won by Federer or Nadal. Djokovic won ten tournaments in 2011, including Grand Slam tournament victories at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. He also captured a record-breaking five ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles, and set a new record for the most prize money won in a single season on the ATP World Tour ($12 million). In the same year, he was awarded the ranking of No. 1. Pete Sampras declared Djokovic's 2011 season as the best he has ever seen in his lifetime, calling it "one of the best achievements in all of sports."Boris Becker called Djokovic's season "one of the very best years in tennis of all time", adding that it "may not be the best statistically, but he's beaten Federer, he's beaten Nadal, he's beaten everybody that came around to challenge him in the biggest tournaments in the world." Rafael Nadal, who lost to Djokovic in six finals on three different surfaces, described Djokovic's performances as "probably the highest level of tennis that I ever saw."  Novak Djokovic won 8th Australia Open and is No. 1 tennis player in the world. On 2 Februray 2020, Novak Djokovic became champioon again at the Australian Open, which is Djokovic's 8th win, making him the first Open Era male player to win Grand Slam titles in three different decades. For his 17th Grand Slam win he received 2.5 Million Euro as prize money. Djokovic is considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Following his tremendous success in the 2011 season, he began to feature on all-time greatest lists. Djokovic met his future wife, Jelena Ristić, in high school, and began dating her in 2005. The two became engaged in September 2013, and got married on on 10 July 2014. ] Their son, Stefan, was born on 21 October 2014 in Nice, France.Their daughter, Tara, was born on 2 September 2017. A resident of Monte Carlo, Djokovic was coached by former Slovak tennis player Marián Vajda from 2006 until Boris Becker took over the role of head coach in December 2013. Djokovic is a polyglot, speaking Serbian, English, French, German, and Italian. Djokovic has been reported to meditate for up to an hour a day at the Buddhist Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, and he has spoken of the positive power of meditation   Name: Alphonse Mucha original name: Alfons Maria Mucha birth place: Ivancice, Moravia, Austria Empire birth date: 24 July 1860 zodiac sign: Leo death place: Praque, Czechoslovakia death date: 14 July 1939  Profile of Alphonse Mucha Alfons Maria Mucha (24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, and designs, which became among the best-known images of the period. In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland of Bohemia-Moravia region in Austria and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in Brno.  Biography of Alphonse Mucha Brno Alphonse Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in the small town of Ivančice in southern Moravia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, (currently a region of the Czech Republic). His father was a court usher, and his mother was a miller's daughter. Alphonse Mucha showed an early talent for drawing; a local merchant who was impressed by his work provided him free paper, a luxury at time. In 1871, Mucha became a chorister at the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, Brno, where he received his secondary school education. He became devoutly religious, and wrote later, "For me, the notions of painting, going to church, and music are so closely knit that often I cannot decide whether I like church for its music, or music for its place in the mystery which it accompanies." Mucha grew up in an environment of intense Czech nationalism in all the arts, from music to literature and painting and designed flyers and posters for patriotic rallies. His singing abilities allowed him to continue his musical education at the Gymnázium Brno in the Moravian capital of Brno, but his true ambition was to become an artist. He found some employment designing theatrical scenery and other decorations. In 1878 he applied without success to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, but was rejected and advised "to find a different career".  Vienna In 1880, at the age of 19, he traveled to Vienna, the political and cultural capital of the Empire, and found employment as an apprentice scenery painter for a company which made sets for Vienna theaters. While in Vienna, he discovered the museums, churches, palaces and especially theaters, for which he received free tickets from his employer. He also discovered Hans Makart, a very prominent academic painter, who created murals for many of the palaces and government buildings in Vienna, and was a master of portraits and historical paintings in grand format. His style turned Mucha in that artistic direction and influenced his later work. He also began experimenting with photography, which became an important tool in his later work. To his misfortune, a terrible fire in 1881 destroyed the Ringtheater, the major client of his firm. Later in 1881, almost without funds, he took a train as far north as his money would take him. He arrived in Mikulov in southern Moravia, and began making portraits, decorative art and lettering for tombstones. His work was appreciated, and he was commissioned by Count Eduard Khuen Belasi, a local landlord and nobleman, to paint a series of murals for his residence at Emmahof Castle, and then at his ancestral home in the Tyrol, Gandegg Caste. (The paintings at Emmahof were destroyed by fire in 1948, but his early versions in small format exist and are now on display at the museum in Brno.) Mucha showed his skill at mythological themes, the female form, and lush vegetal decoration. Count Belasi, who was also an amateur painter, took Mucha on expeditions to see art in Venice, Florence and Milan, and introduced him to many artists, including the famous Bavarian romantic painter, Wilhelm Kray, who lived in Munich.  Munich Count Belasi decided to bring Mucha to Munich for formal training, and paid his tuition and cost of living at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Mucha moved there in September, 1885. It is not clear how Mucha actually studied at the Munich Academy, but he did become friends with a number of notable Slavic artists there, including the Czechs Karel Vítězslav Mašek, Ludek Marold and the Russian Leonid Pasternak, father of the famous novelist Boris Pasternak. He founded a Czech students' club, and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague. In 1886 he received a notable commission for a painting of the Czech patron saints Cyril and Methodius, from a group of Czech emigrants, including some of his relatives, who had founded a Roman Catholic church in the town of Pisek, North Dakota. He was very happy with the artistic environment of Munich: he wrote to friends, "Here I am in my new element, painting. I cross all sorts of currents, but without effort, and even with joy. Here, for the first time, I can find the objectives to reach which used to seem inaccessible." However, he found he could not remain forever in Munich; the Bavarian authorities imposed increasing restrictions upon foreign students and residents. Count Belasi suggested that he travel either to Rome or Paris. With Belasi's financial support, he decided in 1887 to move to Paris.  Alphonse Mucha's illustration for Robert de Flersilsee's book Princesse de Tripoli Paris  Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the Académie Julian and the following year, 1889, Académie Colarossi. The two schools taught a wide variety of different styles. His first professors at the Academie Julien were Jules Lefebvre who specialized in female nudes and allegorical paintings, and Jean-Paul Laurens, whose specialties were historical and religious paintings in a realistic and dramatic style. At the end of 1889, as he approached the age of thirty, his patron, Count Belasi, decided that Mucha had received enough education and ended his subsidies. When he arrived in Paris, Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community. He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grand Chaumerie, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent. Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines. In 1890 and 1891, he began providing illustrations for the weekly magazine La Vie popular, which published novels in weekly segments. His illustration for a novel by Guy de Maupassant, called The Useless Beauty, was on the cover of the 22 May 1890 edition. He also made illustrations for Le Petit Français Illustré, which published stories for young people in both magazine and book form. For this magazine he provided dramatic scenes of battles and other historic events, including a cover illustration of a scene from the Franco-Prussian War which was on the 23 January 1892 edition. His illustrations began to give him a regular income. He was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives. He took pictures of himself and his friends, and also regularly used it to compose his drawings. He became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893. In late autumn 1894 he also became friends with the playwright August Strindberg, with whom he had a common interest in philosophy and mysticism. His magazine illustrations led to book illustration; he was commissioned to provide illustrations for Scenes and Episodes of German History by historian Charles Seignobos. Four of his illustrations, including one depicting the death of Frederic Barbarossa, were chosen for display at the 1894 Paris Salon of Artists. He received a medal of honor, his first official recognition. Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialized in the publication of books about art, architecture and the decorative arts. It later launched a new magazine in 1897 called Art et Decoration, which played an early and important role in publicizing the Art Nouveau style. He continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including illustrating a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel, and illustrations for a magazine of the theater arts, called La Costume au théâtre.  Alphonse Mucha working on a poster for publishing house Cassan (1896) At the end of 1894 his career took a dramatic and unexpected turn when he began to work for French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. As Mucha later described it, on 26 December 1894 Bernhardt made a telephone call to Maurice de Brunhoff, the manager of the publishing firm Lemercier which printed her theatrical posters, ordering a new poster for the continuation of the play Gismonda. The play, by Victorien Sardou, had already opened with great success on 31 October 1894 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin. Bernardt decided to have a poster made to advertise the prolongation of the theatrical run after the Christmas break and insisting it be ready by 1 January 1897. Because of the holidays, none of the regular Lemercier artists were available. When Bernhardt called, Mucha happened to be at the publishing house correcting proofs. He already had experience painting Bernhardt; he had made a series of illustrations of her performing in Cleopatra for Costume au Théâtre in 1890. When Gismonda opened in October 1894, Mucha had been commissioned by the magazine Le Gaulois to make a series of illustrations of Bernhardt in the role for a special Christmas supplement, which was published at Christmas 1894, for the high price of fifty centimes a copy. Brunhoff asked Mucha to quickly design the new poster for Bernhardt. The poster was more than life-size; a little more than two meters high, with Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman, dressed in an orchid headdress and floral stole, and holding a palm branch in the Easter procession near the end of the play. One of the innovative features of the posters was the ornate rainbow-shaped arch behind the head, almost like a halo, which focused attention on her face; this feature appeared in all of his future theater posters. Probably because of a shortage of time, some areas of the background were left blank instead of his usual decoration. The only background decoration were the Byzantine mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster featured extremely fine draftsmanship and delicate pastel colors, unlike the typical brightly-colored posters of the time. The top of the poster, with the title, was richly composed and ornamented, and balanced the bottom, where the essential information was given in the shortest possible form; just the name of the theater.  Poster of Sarah Bernhardt as Gismonda (1895) by Alphonse Mucha  Poster for an evening of theater honoring Sarah Bernhardt (1896) The poster appeared on the streets of Paris on 1 January 1895 and caused an immediate sensation. Bernhardt was pleased by the reaction; she ordered four thousand copies of the poster in 1895 and 1896, and gave Mucha a six-year contract to produce more. With his posters all over the city, Mucha found himself quite suddenly famous. Following Gismonda, Bernardt switched to a different printer, F. Champenois, who, like Mucha, was put under contract to work for Bernhardt for six years. Champenois had a large printing house on Boulevard Saint Michel which employed three hundred workers, with twenty steam presses. He gave Mucha a generous monthly salary in exchange for the rights to publish all his works. With his increased income, Mucha was able to move to a three-bedroom apartment with a large studio inside a large historic house at 6 rue du Val-de-Grâce originally built by François Mansart. Mucha designed posters for each successive Bernhardt play, beginning with a reprise of one of her early great successes, La Dame aux Camelias (September 1896), followed by Lorenzaccio (1896); Medea (1898); La Tosca (1898) and Hamlet (1899). He sometimes worked from photographs of Bernhardt, as he did for La Tosca.  In addition to posters, he designed theatrical programs, sets, costumes, and jewelry for Bernhardt. The enterprising Bernhardt set aside a certain number of printed posters of each play to sell to collectors. The success of the Bernhardt posters brought Mucha commissions for advertising posters. He designed posters for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. With Champenois, he also created a new kind of product, a decorative panel, a poster without text, purely for decoration. They were published in large print runs for a modest price. The first series was The Seasons, published in 1896, depicting four different women in extremely decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. In 1897 he produced an individual decorative panel of a young woman in a floral setting, called Reverie, for Champenois. He also designed a calendar with a woman's head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac, The rights were resold to Léon Deschamps, the editor of the arts review La Plume, who brought it out with great success in 1897. The Seasons series was followed by The Flowers The Arts (1898), The Times of Day (1899), Precious Stones (1900), and The Moon and the Stars (1902).Between 1896 and 1904 Mucha created over one hundred poster designs for Champenois. These were sold in various formats, ranging from expensive versions printed on Japanese paper or vellum, to less expensive versions which combined multiple images, to calendars and postcards. His posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame. His poster for the railway line between Paris and Monaco-Monte-Carlo (1897) did not show a train or any identifiable scene of Monaco or Monte-Carlo; it showed a beautiful young woman in a kind of reverie, surrounded by swirling floral images, which suggested the turning wheels of a train. The fame of his posters led to success in the art world; he was invited by Deschamps to show his work in the Salon des Cent exhibition in 1896, and then, in 1897, to have a major retrospective in the same gallery showing 448 works. The magazine La Plume made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition traveled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation "I had not found any real satisfaction in my old kind of work. I saw that my way was to be found elsewhere, little bit higher. I sought a way to spread the light which reached further into even the darkest corners. I didn't have to look for very long. The Pater Noster (Lord's Prayer): why not give the words a pictorial expression?" Alphonse Mucha made a considerable income from his theatrical and advertising work, but he wished even more to be recognized as a serious artist and philosopher. He was a devoted Catholic, but also was interested in mysticism. Le Pater was published on 20 December 1899, only 510 copies were printed. The original watercolor paintings of the page were displayed in the Austrian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition. He considered Le Pater to be his printed masterpiece, and referred to it in the New York Sun of 5 January 1900 as a work into which he had "put his soul".  Cover of Le Pater (1899) by Alphonse Mucha In 1899 Alphonse Mucha also collaborated with the jeweler Georges Fouquet to make a bracelet for Sarah Bernhardt in the form of a serpent, made of gold and enamel, similar to the costume jewelry Bernhardt wore in Medea. The Cascade pendant designed for Fouquet by Mucha (1900) is in the form of a waterfall. After the 1900 Exposition, Fouquet decided to open a new shop and asked Mucha to design the interior. The centerpieces of the design were two peacocks, the traditional symbol of luxury, made of bronze and wood with colored glass decoration. To the side was a shell-shaped fountain, with three gargoyles spouting water into basins, surrounding the statue of a nude woman. The salon was further decorated with carved moldings and stained glass, thin columents with vegetal designs, and a ceiling with molded floral and vegetal elements. It marked a summit of Art Nouveau decoration. (The Salon opened in 1901, just as tastes were beginning to change, moving away from Art Nouveau to more naturalistic patterns. It was taken apart in 1923, and a replaced by a more traditional shop design. Fortunately most of the original decoration was preserved, and was donated in 1914 and 1949 to the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, where it can be seen today.)  1900, Universal Exposition, Paris The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, famous as the first grand showcase of the Art Nouveau, gave Mucha an opportunity to move in an entirely different direction, toward the large-scale historical paintings which he had admired in Vienna. It also allowed him to express his Czech patriotism. His work appeared in many forms at the Exposition. He designed the posters, menus, displays for the jeweler and perfume maker, with statuettes and panels of women depicting the scents of rose, orange blossom, violet and buttercup. His more serious art works, including his drawings for Le Pater, were shown in the Austrian Pavilion and in the Austrian section of the Grand Palais. His work at the Exposition earned him the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph I from the Austrian government, the Legion of Honor from the French Government. During the course of the Exposition, Mucha proposed another unusual project. The Government of France planned to take down the Eiffel Tower, built especially for the Exposition, as soon as the Exposition ended. Mucha proposed that, after the Exposition, the top of the tower should be replaced by a sculptural monument to humanity be constructed on the pedestal. The tower proved to be popular with both tourists and Parisians, and the Eiffel Tower remained after the Exhibit ended. Mucha's next project was a series of seventy-two printed plates of watercolors of designs, titled Documents Decoratifs, which were published in 1902 by the Librarie central des beaux-arts. They represented ways that floral, vegetal and natural forms could be used in decoration and decorative objects, featuring plates of elaborate jewel designs for brooches and other pieces, with swirling arabesques and vegetal forms, with incrustations of enamel and colored stones.  Painting of Josephine Crane Bradley as Slavia (1908) "You must have been very surprised by my decision to come to America, perhaps even amazed. But in fact I had been preparing to come here for some time. It had become clear to me that that I would never have time to do the things I wanted to do if I did not get away from the treadmill of Paris, I would be constantly bound to publishers and their whims...in America, I don't expect to find wealth, comfort, or fame for myself, only the opportunity to do some more useful work." In March 1904 Mucha sailed for New York with letters of introduction from Baroness Salomon de Rothschild. He intended to find funding for his grand project, The Slav Epic, which he had conceived during the 1900 Exposition. At one Pan-Slavic banquet in New York City, he met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, who was a passionate Slavophile and became Mucha's most important patron. He made a few trips to USA between 1904 and 1910, usually staying for five to six months. In 1906, he returned to New York with his new wife, (Marie/Maria) Chytilová, and they remained in the U.S. until 1909 and their first child, Jaroslava, was born in New York in 1909. His principal income in the United States came from teaching, and artistically, the trip was not a success; His finest work in America is often considered to be his portrait of Josephine Crane Bradley, the daughter of his patron, in the character of Slavia, in Slavic costume and surrounded by symbols from Slavic folklore and art. During his long stay in Paris, Mucha had never given up his dream of being a history painter, and to illustrate accomplishments of the Slavic peoples of Europe. He made the decision to return to his old country, still then part of the Austrian Empire. His first project in 1910 was the decoration of the reception room of the mayor of Prague. He designed and created a series of large-scale murals for the domed ceiling and walls with athletic figures in heroic poses, depicting the contributions of Slavs to European history over the centuries, and the theme of Slavic unity. These paintings on the ceiling and walls were in sharp contrast to his Parisian work, and were designed to send a patriotic message. The Lord Mayor's Hall was finished in 1911, and Mucha was able to devote his attention to what he considered his most important work; The Slav Epic, a series of large painting illustrating the achievements of the Slavic peoples over history. The series had twenty paintings, half devoted to the history of the Czechs, and ten to other Slavic peoples. The canvases were enormous; the finished works measured six by eight meters. He created the twenty canvases between 1912 and 1926. He worked throughout the First World War, when the Austrian Empire was at war with France, despite wartime restrictions, which made canvas hard to obtain. He continued his work after the war ended, when the new Republic of Czechoslovkia was created. The cycle was completed in 1928 in time for the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic  Alphonse Mucha in Prague (1928) In the political turmoil of the 1930s, Mucha's work received little attention in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1936 a major retrospective was held in Paris at the Jeu de Paume museum, with 139 works, including three canvases from the Slav Epic.
Hitler and Nazi Germany began to threaten Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Mucha began work on a new series, a triptych depicting the Age of Reason, the Age of Wisdom and the Age of Love, which he worked on from 1936 to 1938, but never completed. On 15 March 1939, the German army paraded through Prague, and Hitler, at Prague castle, declared lands of the former Czechoslovakia to be part of the Greater German Reich as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Mucha's role as a Slav nationalist and Freemason made him a prime target. He was arrested, interrogated for several days, and released. By then his health was broken. He contracted pneumonia and died on 14 July 1939, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War. Though public gatherings were banned, a huge crowd attended his interment in the Slavín Monument of Vyšehrad cemetery, reserved for notable figures in Czech culture.  Frederic Leighton self portrait Name: frederic leighton birth place: Scarborough, England birth date: 3 December 1830 zodiac sign: Sagittarius death place: London, England death date: 25 January 1896  Solitude by Sir Frederic Leighton Profile Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, PRA (3 December 1830 – 25 January 1896), known as Sir Frederic Leighton between 1878 and 1896, was a British painter, draughtsman and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter. Leighton was the bearer of the shortest-lived peerage in history; after only one day his hereditary peerage became extinct upon his death.  the painter's honeymoon 1864 by Sir Frederic Leighton Biography Leighton was born in Scarborough to Augusta Susan and Dr. Frederic Septimus Leighton. He had two sisters including Alexandra who was Robert Browning's biographer. He was educated at University College School, London. He then received his artistic training on the European continent, first from Eduard von Steinle and then from Giovanni Costa. At age 17, in the summer of 1847, he met the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in Frankfurt and drew his portrait, in graphite and gouache on paper — the only known full-length study of Schopenhauer done from life. When he was 24 he was in Florence; he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and painted the procession of the Cimabue Madonna through the Borgo Allegri. From 1855 to 1859 he lived in Paris, where he met Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Millet. In 1860, he moved to London, where he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861. In 1864 he became an associate of the Royal Academy and in 1878 he became its President (1878–96). His 1877 sculpture, Athlete Wrestling with a Python, was considered at its time to inaugurate a renaissance in contemporary British sculpture, referred to as the New Sculpture. American art critic Earl Shinn claimed at the time that "Except Leighton, there is scarce any one capable of putting up a correct frescoed figure in the archway of the Kensington Museum." His paintings represented Britain at the great 1900 Paris Exhibition. Leighton was knighted at Windsor in 1878, and was created a baronet, of Holland Park Road in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in the County of Middlesex, eight years later. He was the first painter to be given a peerage, in the 1896 New Year Honours. The patent creating him Baron Leighton, of Stretton in the County of Shropshire, was issued on 24 January 1896; Leighton died the next day of angina pectoris  The Bath of Psyche 1879 by Sir Frederic Leighton On his death Leighton's barony was extinguished after existing for only a day; this is a record in the Peerage. His house in Holland Park, London has been turned into a museum, the Leighton House Museum. It contains many of his drawings and paintings, as well as some of his former art collection including works by Old Masters and his contemporaries such as a painting dedicated to Leighton by Sir John Everett Millais. The house also features many of Leighton's inspirations, including his collection of Iznik tiles. Its centrepiece is the magnificent Arab Hall. The Hall is featured in issue ten of Cornucopia. A blue plaque commemorates Leighton at Leighton House Museum.  Idyll by Frederic Leighton 1880-1881  Leighton was an enthusiastic volunteer soldier, enrolling with the first group to join the 38th Middlesex (Artists') Rifle Volunteer Corps (later to be known as the Artists Rifles). His qualities of leadership were immediately identified, and he was promoted to command a Company within a few months. On 6 January 1869 Captain Leighton was elected to command the Artists Rifles by a general meeting of the corps. In the same year he was promoted to major and in 1875 to lieutenant colonel. Leighton resigned as commanding officer in 1883. The painter James Whistler famously described the then, Sir Frederic Leighton, the commanding officer of the Artists Rifles, as the: “Colonel of the Royal Academy and the President of the Artists Rifles – aye, and he paints a little!" At his funeral, on 3 February 1896, his coffin was carried into St Paul's Cathedral, past a guard of honour formed by the Artists Rifles.  oil painting Cymon and Iphigenia by Sir Frederic Leighton 1884  he Garden of the Hesperides by Sir Frederic Leighton 1892, Lady Lever Art Gallery  Flaming June (June Flamboyante) by Frederic Leighton, 1895  Gustaf Lundberg, Portrait de François Boucher (1741), pastel, Paris, musée du Louvre. name: François Boucher birth place: Paris France birth date: 30 September 1703 zodiac sign: Libra death place: Paris France death date: 30 May 1770  Madame de Pompadour par François Boucher  Madame de Pompadour par François Boucher François Boucher, né le 29 septembre 1703 à Paris où il est mort le 30 mai 1770, est un peintre français, représentatif du style rococo. Maître particulièrement prolifique, Boucher a abordé tous les genres : peinture religieuse, sujets mythologiques, scènes rustiques, paysages, animaux, décorations de monuments et de maisons particulières, modèles de tapisserie. C’est peut-être le plus célèbre peintre et artiste décoratif du xviiie siècle, dont on a pu dire qu’il était l’un des génies les plus purs. Il estimait lui-même, un an avant sa mort, avoir produit plus de dix mille dessins, mais trouvait encore le temps de travailler dix heures par jour à des représentations idylliques et voluptueuses de thèmes classiques, mythologiques et érotiques, d’allégories décoratives et de scènes pastorales. Nombre de ces toiles, réalisées pour la décoration intérieure, constituent des paires ou des séries. Il était peintre de la cour de Louis XV et le favori de la marquise de Pompadour, dont il a peint plusieurs portraits.  Diane sortant du bain (1742), Paris, musée du Louvre. BiographieFils unique d’Élisabeth Lemesle et de Nicolas Boucher, maître peintre et dessinateur de l’Académie de Saint-Luc, il reçoit les premières leçons de son père, mais il montrait de telles dispositions que celui-ci décida de le faire travailler sous une direction plus qualifiée que la sienne. Vers 1720, il entre, âgé de 17 ans, dans l’atelier de Lemoyne, qui l’initia aux secrets de la peinture décorative et des grandes scènes mythologiques, dans lesquelles il était spécialisé. Il ne resta que fort peu de temps dans cet atelier de Lemoyne, quelques mois à peine. Pour se procurer les ressources nécessaires pour vivre, il dut accepter des travaux de dessin et de gravure du graveur et éditeur Jean-François Cars. Ses premiers essais décidèrent le collectionneur Jean de Jullienne à lui passer commandes de gravures d'après Watteau. Cette période de son apprentissage fut des plus profitables à Boucher qui trouva dans les œuvres de Watteau, qui venait de mourir, en 1722, tous les éléments de sa propre inspiration. Très épris de son art, il voulait entrer à I‘Académie et s’efforçait de perfectionner sa technique, travaillant à la fois le dessin, la gravure et la peinture. Il se forma également auprès de Sebastiano Ricci et Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, actifs à Paris dans les années 17208. En 1723, il concourut au prix de l’Académie de peinture, en attendant qu’une pension pût lui être attribuée pour l’Académie de France à Rome, il continua à graver pour Jullienne. En 1725, il exposait pour la première fois, quelques tableaux à l’Exposition de la jeunesse de la place Dauphine. Deux ans plus tard, en 1727, ayant réuni quelque argent, il partit pour Rome, comme élève libre. À peine arrivé, Boucher se mit au travail. Après un séjour de près de quatre années en Italie, il rentra à Paris. Agréé dès son retour à l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, le 24 novembre 1731, il devint immédiatement le peintre mondain, le portraitiste semi-officiel des femmes à la mode, épouses ou maîtresses des financiers, gagnant une fortune rapide et un renom considérable. Les commandes commencent à affluer, et c’est de 1732 que date la réalisation de Renaud et Armide, inspiré de la Jérusalem délivrée du Tasse, où le modèle de la blonde Armide est Marie-Jeanne Buseau, la jeune fille de 17 ans qu’il épousera le 21 avril 1733. Au dire de ses contemporains, Marie-Jeanne était remarquablement jolie, et Boucher semble s’en être souvent inspiré dans ses créations de jeunes beautés radieuses et triomphantes. Elle posa également pour d'autres peintres de leur entourage comme La Tour, Lundberg ou le peintre suédois Roslin. Marie-Jeanne Boucher travailla avec son mari, grava quelques-uns de ses dessins, et reproduisit en miniature plusieurs de ses tableaux.  Renaud et Armide (1732), Paris, musée du Louvre. Le 30 janvier 1734, il est reçu comme peintre d'histoire, à l’Académie royale sur présentation de son tableau de 1732, Renaud et Armide, aujourd’hui conservé au Louvre, et Oudry. Le 2 juillet 1735, il est nommé, avec Carle Van Loo et Natoire, adjoint à professeur de l'Académie. Même s'il a été marqué par le style du peintre Lemoyne, Boucher trouve vers 1736 son style propre en devenant, en peinture, le maître incontesté du style rocaille. Principal peintre du rococo français, il devient le peintre à la mode. Il obtient la faveur de Madame de Pompadour dont il fera à plusieurs reprises, le portrait et composera pour elle ses œuvres les plus raffinées dans les années 1650, ainsi que des décors pour son château de Bellevue et pour son boudoir de Crécy. Il travaille également pour de hauts personnages de la cour, comme le duc de Penthièvren ou pour des souverains étrangers (Le Triomphe de Vénus en 1740 pour le roi de Suède). Il est un grand ami du général Montmorency. En 1765, il succède à Carle Van Loo comme Premier peintre de Louis XV. Travaillant avec une extrême facilité, il se vante d'avoir gagné jusqu'à 50 000 francs par an. Il participe à la décoration des châteaux de Versailles et de Fontainebleau, à celle du cabinet des Médailles de la Bibliothèque nationale (1741-1746). Il invente des décors pour le théâtre et l'opéra et donne aussi de nombreux modèles à la manufacture de Vincennes de 1750 à 1755 puis à la manufacture royale de Sèvres, essentiellement entre 1757 et 1767. Ses figures d'enfants, dits Enfants Boucher sont traduites sous forme de motifs peints ou de biscuits et également de petites pièces de tapisseries destinées à l'ameublement.  Madame Bergeret (1766 ?), New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Associé avec le marchand d'art Edme-François Gersaint, François Boucher est l'introducteur du goût pour les chinoiseries, des objets et des artéfacts venant de Chine, du Japon ou du royaume de Siam. Certains de ses objets apparaissent en second plan dans ses tableaux " La toilette, 1742" ( Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid,) ou " Femme allongée au divan" (Frick Collection, New York).  La Toilette par François Boucher, 1742©Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Son style passe de mode avec l'arrivée du néoclassicisme vers 1760. Jusqu'à sa mort, en 1770, Boucher garde son style et expose ses œuvres au Salon, excepté lors de l'édition 1767. Boucher est un de ces hommes qui signifient le goût d'un siècle, qui l'expriment, le personnifient et l'incarnent […]Il est simplement un peintre original et grandement doué, à qui il a manqué une qualité supérieure, le signe de race des grands peintres : la distinction. Il a une manière et n'a pas de style. […] La vulgarité élégante, voilà la signature de Boucher.  Leda and the Swan, 1741 ProfileFrançois Boucher (29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. BiographyA native of Paris, Boucher was the son of a lesser known painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a painting by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne who later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only three months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars.  The secret message by François Boucher In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until five years later, due to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. On his return from studying in Italy for about 4 years, Boucher was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731. Boucher married Marie-Jeanne Buzeau, whom he used as his model for his painting Rinaldo and Armida of 1734 Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from this point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of the Academy, becoming inspector at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) in 1765. Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his native Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it." La nature est trop verte et mal éclairée"  La Toilette de Vénus par François Boucher  name: Jules Lefebvre birth place: Tournan-en-Brie France birth date: 14 March 1836 zodiac sign: pisces death place: Paris France death date: 24 February 1911  Clémence Isaure by Jules Joseph Lefebvre Biography Jules Joseph Lefebvre (14 March 1836 – 24 February 1911) was a French figure painter, educator and theorist. He was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836.[1] He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet.  Rachel by Jules Lefebvre, 1888 He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1861. Between 1855 and 1898, he exhibited 72 portraits in the Paris Salon. In 1891, he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He was professor at the Académie Julian in Paris. Lefebvre is chiefly important as an excellent and sympathetic teacher who numbered many Americans among his 1500 or more pupils. Among his famous students were Fernand Khnopff, Kenyon Cox, Félix Vallotton, Ernst Friedrich von Liphart,Georges Rochegrosse, the Scottish-born landscape painter William Hart, Walter Lofthouse Dean, and Edmund C. Tarbell, who became an American Impressionist painter. Another pupil was the miniaturist Alice Beckington. Jules Benoit-Lévy entered his workshop at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women. Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). Lefebvre died in Paris on 24 February 1911.  Judith by Jules Lefebvre, 1892 Biographie Jules Lefebvre, né à Tournan-en-Brie le 14 mars 1834 et mort à Paris le 24 février 1912, est un peintre français. Il est professeur à l'École des beaux-arts de Paris et à l'Académie Julian. Venant de Seine-et-Marne, la famille de Jules Lefebvre s'établit à Amiens vers 1836. Son père y exerce la profession de boulanger. L'enfant fréquente l'école communale de dessin où son professeur, Joseph Fusillier, remarque son talent.  Sirvienta  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres selft portrait 1804 name: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres birth place: Montauban, France birth date: 28 August 1780 zodiac sign: Virgo death place: Paris, France death date: 14 January 1876  La Grande Odalisque (1814), the Louvre Profile of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Picasso, Matisse and other modernists. Born into a modest family in Montauban, he travelled to Paris to study in the studio of David. In 1802 he made his Salon debut, and won the Prix de Rome for his painting The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. By the time he departed in 1806 for his residency in Rome, his style—revealing his close study of Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters—was fully developed, and would change little for the rest of his life. While working in Rome and subsequently Florence from 1806 to 1824, he regularly sent paintings to the Paris Salon, where they were faulted by critics who found his style bizarre and archaic. He received few commissions during this period for the history paintings he aspired to paint, but was able to support himself and his wife as a portrait painter and draughtsman. He was finally recognized at the Salon in 1824, when his Raphaelesque painting of the Vow of Louis XIII was met with acclaim, and Ingres was acknowledged as the leader of the Neoclassical school in France. Although the income from commissions for history paintings allowed him to paint fewer portraits, his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin marked his next popular success in 1833. The following year, his indignation at the harsh criticism of his ambitious composition The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian caused him to return to Italy, where he assumed directorship of the French Academy in Rome in 1835 but he returned to Paris for good in 1841. In his later years he painted new versions of many of his earlier compositions, a series of designs for stained glass windows, several important portraits of women, and The Turkish Bath, the last of his several Orientalist paintings of the female nude, which he finished at the age of 83. Ingres was also an amateur violin player from his youth, and played for a time as second violinist for the orchestra of Toulouse. When he was Director of the French Academy in Rome, he played frequently with the music students and guest artists. Charles Gounod, who was a student under Ingres at the Academy, merely noted that "he was not a professional, even less a virtuoso". Along with the student musicians, he performed Beethoven string quartets with Niccolò Paganini. In an 1839 letter, Franz Liszt described his playing as "charming", and planned to play through all the Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas with Ingres. Liszt also dedicated his transcriptions of the 5th and 6th symphonies of Beethoven to Ingres on their original publication in 1840. Biography of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Early years Ingres was born in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, France, his father Joseph Ingres was a successful jack-of-all-trades in the arts, a painter of miniatures, sculptor, decorative stonemason, and amateur musician; his mother was the nearly illiterate daughter of a master wigmaker. From his father the young Ingres received early encouragement and instruction in drawing and music, and his first known drawing, a study after an antique cast, was made in 1789. Starting in 1786 he attended the local school École des Frères de l'Éducation Chrétienne, but his education was disrupted by the turmoil of the French Revolution, and the closing of the school in 1791 marked the end of his conventional education. The deficiency in his schooling would always remain for him a source of insecurity. In 1791, his father took him to Toulouse, where the young Jean-Auguste-Dominique was enrolled in the Académie Royale de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture. There he studied under the sculptor Jean-Pierre Vigan, the landscape painter Jean Briant, and the neoclassical painter Guillaume-Joseph Roques. Roques' veneration of Raphael was a decisive influence on the young artist. Ingres won prizes in several disciplines, such as composition, "figure and antique", and life studies. His musical talent was developed under the tutelage of the violinist Lejeune, and from the ages of thirteen to sixteen he played second violin in the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse. Ingres's well-known passion for playing the violin gave rise to a common expression in the French language, "violon d'Ingres", meaning a second skill beyond the one by which a person is mainly known. The American avant-garde artist Man Ray used this expression as the title of a famous photograph portraying Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) in the pose of the Valpinçon Bather. From an early age he was determined to be a history painter, which, in the hierarchy of artists established by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture under Louis XIV, and continued well into the 19th Century, was considered the highest level of painting. He did not want to simply make portraits or illustrations of real life like his father; he wanted to represent the heroes of religion, history and mythology, to idealize them and show them in ways that explained their actions, rivaling the best works of literature and philosophy.  Study of a Male Torso, 1801, National Museum in Warsaw Paris In March 1797, the Academy awarded Ingres first prize in drawing, and in August he traveled to Paris to study in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, France's—and Europe's—leading painter during the revolutionary period, in whose studio he remained for four years. Ingres followed his master's neoclassical example. In 1797 David was working on his enormous masterpiece, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, and was gradually modifying his style away from Roman models of rigorous realism to the ideals of purity, virtue and simplicity in Greek art. One of the other students of David, Étienne-Jean Delécluze, who later became an art critic, described Ingres as a student: He was distinguished not just by the candor of his character and his disposition to work alone ... he was one of the most studious ... he took little part in all the turbulent follies around him, and he studied with more perseverance than most of his co-disciples ... All of the qualities which characterize today the talent of this artist, the finesse of contour, the true and profound sentiment of the form, and a modeling with extraordinary correctness and firmness, could already be seen in his early studies. While several of his comrades and David himself signaled a tendency toward exaggeration in his studies, everyone was struck by his grand compositions and recognized his talent. He was admitted to the painting department of the École des Beaux-Arts in October 1799. In 1800 and 1801, he won the grand prize for figure painting for his paintings of male torsos and competed for the Prix de Rome, the highest prize of the Academy, which entitled the winner to four years of residence at the Académie de France in Rome. He came in second in his first attempt, but in 1801 he took the top prize with The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. The figures of the envoys, in the right of the painting, are muscular and solid as statues, in the style taught by David, but the two main figures on the left, Achilles and Patroclus, are mobile, vivid and graceful, like figures in a delicate bas-relief. His residence in Rome was postponed until 1806 due to shortage of state funds. In the meantime he worked in Paris alongside several other students of David in a studio provided by the state, and further developed a style that emphasized purity of contour. He found inspiration in the works of Raphael, in Etruscan vase paintings, and in the outline engravings of the English artist John Flaxman. His drawings of Hermaphrodite and the Nymph Salmacis showed a new stylized ideal of female beauty, which would reappear later in his Jupiter et Thetis and his famous nudes. In 1802 he made his debut at the Salon with Portrait of a Woman (the current whereabouts of which is unknown). Between 1804 and 1806 he painted a series of portraits which were striking for their extreme precision, particularly in the richness of their fabrics and tiny details. These included the Portrait of Philipbert Riviére (1805), Portrait of Sabine Rivière (1805–06), Portrait of Madame Aymon (also known as La Belle Zélie; 1806), and Portrait of Caroline Rivière (1805–06). The female faces were not at all detailed but were softened, and were notable for their large oval eyes and delicate flesh colours and their rather dreamlike expressions. His portraits typically had simple backgrounds of solid dark or light colour, or of sky. These were the beginning of a series that would make him among the most celebrated portrait artists of the 19th century.  Madame Rivière (1805–06), oil on canvas, 116.5 x 81.7 cm, Louvre As Ingres waited to depart to Rome, his friend Lorenzo Bartolini introduced him to Italian Renaissance paintings, particularly the works of Bronzino and Pontormo, which Napoleon had brought back from his campaign in Italy and placed in the Louvre. Ingres assimilated their clarity and monumentality into his own portrait style. In the Louvre were also masterpieces of Flemish art, including the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck, which the French army had seized during its conquest of Flanders. The precision of Renaissance Flemish art became part of Ingres's style. Ingres's stylistic eclecticism represented a new tendency in art. The Louvre, newly filled with booty seized by Napoleon in his campaigns in Italy and the Low Countries, provided French artists of the early 19th century with an unprecedented opportunity to study, compare, and copy masterworks from antiquity and from the entire history of European painting. As art historian Marjorie Cohn has written: "At the time, art history as a scholarly enquiry was brand-new. Artists and critics outdid each other in their attempts to identify, interpret, and exploit what they were just beginning to perceive as historical stylistic developments." From the beginning of his career, Ingres freely borrowed from earlier art, adopting the historical style appropriate to his subject, and was consequently accused by critics of plundering the past. In 1803 he received a prestigious commission, being one of five artists selected (along with Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Robert Lefèvre, Charles Meynier, and Marie-Guillemine Benoist) to paint full-length portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul. These were to be distributed to the prefectural towns of Liège, Antwerp, Dunkerque, Brussels, and Ghent, all of which were newly ceded to France in the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville. Napoleon is not known to have granted the artists a sitting, and Ingres's meticulously painted portrait of Bonaparte, First Consul appears to be modelled on an image of Napoleon painted by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1802.  Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas, 260 x 163 cm, Musée de l'Armée, Paris Ingres painted a new portrait of Napoleon for presentation at the 1806 Salon, this one showing Napoleon on the Imperial Throne for his coronation. This painting was entirely different from his earlier portrait of Napoleon as First Consul; it concentrated almost entirely on the lavish imperial costume that Napoleon had chosen to wear, and the symbols of power he held. The scepter of Charles V, the sword of Charlemagne, the rich fabrics, furs and capes, crown of gold leaves, golden chains and emblems were all presented in extremely precise detail; the Emperor's face and hands were almost lost in the majestic costume. At the Salon, his paintings: Self-Portrait, portraits of the Rivière family, and Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne received a very chilly reception. David delivered a severe judgement, and the critics were hostile. Chaussard (Le Pausanias Français, 1806) praised "the fineness of Ingres's brushwork and the finish", but condemned Ingres's style as gothic and asked: How, with so much talent, a line so flawless, an attention to detail so thorough, has M. Ingres succeeded in painting a bad picture? The answer is that he wanted to do something singular, something extraordinary ... M. Ingres's intention is nothing less than to make art regress by four centuries, to carry us back to its infancy, to revive the manner of Jean de Bruges? Rome and Florence After arriving in Rome, Ingres read with mounting indignation the relentlessly negative press clippings sent to him from Paris by his friends. In letters to his prospective father-in-law, he expressed his outrage at the critics: "So the Salon is the scene of my disgrace; ... The scoundrels, they waited until I was away to assassinate my reputation ... I have never been so unhappy....I knew I had many enemies; I never was agreeable with them and never will be. My greatest wish would be to fly to the Salon and to confound them with my works, which don't in any way resemble theirs; and the more I advance, the less their work will resemble mine." He vowed never again to exhibit at the Salon, and his refusal to return to Paris led to the breaking up of his engagement. Julie Forestier, when asked years later why she had never married, responded, "When one has had the honor of being engaged to M. Ingres, one does not marry." On 23 November 1806, he wrote to Jean Forestier, the father of his former fiancée, "Yes, art will need to be reformed, and I intend to be that revolutionary." Characteristically, he found a studio on the grounds of the Villa Medici away from the other resident artists, and painted furiously. Many drawings of monuments in Rome from this time are attributed to Ingres, but it appears from more recent scholarship that they were actually the work of his collaborators, particularly his friend the landscape artist François-Marius Granet. As required of every winner of the Prix, he sent works at regular intervals to Paris so his progress could be judged. Traditionally fellows sent paintings of male Greek or Roman heroes, but for his first samples Ingres sent Baigneuse à mi-corps (1807), a painting of the back of a young woman bathing, based on an engraving of an antique vase, and La Grande Bagneuse (1808), a larger painting of the back of a nude bather, and the first Ingres model to wear a turban, a detail he borrowed from the Fornarina by his favourite painter, Raphael. To satisfy the Academy in Paris, he also dispatched Oedipus and the Sphinx to show his mastery of the male nude. The verdict of the academicians in Paris was that the figures were not sufficiently idealized. In later years Ingres painted several variants of these compositions; another nude begun in 1807, the Venus Anadyomene, remained in an unfinished state for decades, to be completed forty years later and finally exhibited in 1855.  Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808), Louvre During his time in Rome he also produced numerous portraits: Madame Duvauçay, François-Marius Granet, Edme-François-Joseph Bochet, Madame Panckoucke, and that of Madame la Comtesse de Tournon, mother of the prefect of the department of the Tiber. In 1810 Ingres's pension at the Villa Medici ended, but he decided to stay in Rome and seek patronage from the French occupation government. In 1811 Ingres completed his final student exercise, the immense Jupiter and Thetis, a scene from the Iliad of Homer: the goddess of the Sea, Thetis, pleads with Zeus to act in favor of her son Achilles. The face of the water nymph Salmacis he had drawn years earlier reappeared as Thetis. Ingres wrote with enthusiasm that he had been planning to paint this subject since 1806, and he intended to "deploy all of the luxury of art in its beauty". However, once again, the critics were hostile, finding fault with the exaggerated proportions of the figures and the painting's flat, airless quality. Although facing uncertain prospects, in 1813 Ingres married a young woman, Madeleine Chapelle, recommended to him by her friends in Rome. After a courtship carried out through correspondence, he proposed without having met her, and she accepted. Their marriage was happy; Madame Ingres's faith was unwavering. He continued to suffer disparaging reviews, as Don Pedro of Toledo Kissing Henry IV's Sword, Raphael and the Fornarina (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), several portraits, and the Interior of the Sistine Chapel met with generally hostile critical response at the Paris Salon of 1814. After he left the Academy, a few important commissions came to him. The French governor of Rome, General Miollis, a wealthy patron of the arts, asked him to decorate rooms of the Monte Cavallo Palace, a former papal residence, for an expected visit of Napoleon. Ingres painted a large-scale Romulus' Victory Over Acron (1811) for the salon of the Empress and The Dream of Ossian (1813), based on a book of poems that Napoleon admired, for the ceiling of the Emperor's bedroom. General Miollis also commissioned Ingres to paint Virgil reading the Aeneid (1812) for his own residence, the villa Aldobrandini. The painting showed the moment when Virgil predicted the death of Marcellus, the son of Livia, causing Livia to faint. The interior was precisely depicted, following the archeological finds at Pompeii. As usual, Ingres made several versions of the same scene: a three-figure fragment cut from an abandoned version is in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, and in 1832 he made a drawing in vertical format as a model for a reproductive engraving by Pradier. The General Miollis version was repurchased by Ingres in the 1830s, reworked by assistants under Ingres's direction, and never finished; The Dream of Ossian was likewise repurchased, modified, but left unfinished. He traveled to Naples in the spring of 1814 to paint Queen Caroline Murat. Joachim Murat, the King of Naples, had earlier purchased the Dormeuse de Naples, a sleeping nude (the original is lost, but several drawings exist, and Ingres later revisited the subject in L'Odalisque à l'esclave). Murat also commissioned two historical paintings, Raphael et la Fornarina and Paolo et Francesca, and what later became one of Ingres's most famous works, La Grande Odalisque, to accompany Dormeuse de Naples. Ingres never received payment, due to the collapse of the Murat regime and execution of Joachim Murat in 1815. With the fall of Napoleon's dynasty, he found himself essentially stranded in Rome without patronage.  La Grande Odalisque (1814), the Louvre Ingres continued to produce masterful portraits, both in pencil and oils, of almost photographic precision; but with the departure of the French administration, the painting commissions were rare. During this low point of his career, Ingres augmented his income by drawing pencil portraits of the many wealthy tourists, in particular the English, passing through postwar Rome. The portrait drawings he produced in such profusion during this period rank today among his most admired works. He is estimated to have made some five hundred portrait drawings, including portraits of his famous friends. His friends included many musicians including Paganini, and he regularly played the violin with others who shared his enthusiasm for Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, and Beethoven.  The violinist Niccolo Paganini (1819) by Dominique Ingres He also produced a series of small paintings in what was known as the Troubador style, idealized portrayals of events in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In 1815 he painted Aretino and Charles V's Ambassador as well as Aretino and Tintoretto, an anecdotal painting whose subject, a painter brandishing a pistol at his critic, may have been especially satisfying to the embattled Ingres. Other paintings in the same style included Henry IV Playing with His Children (1817) and the Death of Leonardo. In 1816 Ingres produced his only etching, a portrait of the French ambassador to Rome, Monsignor Gabriel Cortois de Pressigny. The only other prints he is known to have executed are two lithographs: The Four Magistrates of Besançon, made as an illustration for Baron Taylor's Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, and a copy of La Grande Odalisque, both in 1825. In 1817 the Count of Blacas, who was ambassador of France to the Holy See, provided Ingres with his first official commission since 1814, for a painting of Christ Giving the Keys to Peter. Completed in 1820, this imposing work was well received in Rome but to the artist's chagrin the ecclesiastical authorities there would not permit it to be sent to Paris for exhibition. A commission came in 1816 or 1817 from the descendants of the Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, for a painting of the Duke receiving papal honours for his repression of the Protestant Reformation. Ingres loathed the subject—he regarded the Duke as one of history's brutes—and struggled to satisfy both the commission and his conscience. After revisions which eventually reduced the Duke to a tiny figure in the background, Ingres left the work unfinished. He entered in his diary, "J'etais forcé par la necessité de peindre un pareil tableau; Dieu a voulu qu'il reste en ebauche." ("I was forced by need to paint such a painting; God wanted it to remain a sketch.) He continued to send works to the Salon in Paris, hoping to make his breakthrough there. In 1819 he sent his reclining nude, La Grande Odalisque, as well as a history painting, Philip V and the Marshal of Berwick, and Roger Freeing Angelica, based on an episode in the 16th-century epic poem Orlando Furioso by Ariosto but his work was once again condemned by critics as gothic and unnatural.The critic Kératy complained that the Grande Odalisque's back was three vertebrae too long. The critic Charles Landon wrote: "After a moment of attention, one sees that in this figure there are no bones, no muscles, no blood, no life, no relief, no anything which constitutes imitation....it is evident that the artist deliberately erred, that he wanted to do it badly, that he believed in bringing back to life the pure and primitive manner of the painters of Antiquity; but he took for his model a few fragments from earlier periods and a degenerate execution, and completely lost his way." Florence In 1820 Ingres and his wife moved to Florence at the urging of the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, an old friend from his years in Paris. He still had to depend upon his portraits and drawings for income, but his luck began to change. His history painting Roger Freeing Angelica was purchased for the private collection of Louis XVIII, and was hung in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, which was newly devoted to the work of living artists. This was the first work of Ingres to enter a museum. In 1821 he finished a painting commissioned by a childhood friend, Monsieur de Pastoret, The Entry into Paris of the Dauphin, the Future Charles V; de Pastoret also ordered a portrait of himself and a religious work (Virgin with the Blue Veil). In August 1820, with the help of de Pastoret, he received a commission for a major religious painting for the Cathedral of Montauban. The theme was the re-establishment of the bond between the church and the state. Ingres's painting, The Vow of Louis XIII (1824), inspired by Raphael, was purely in the Renaissance style, and depicted King Louis XIII vowing to dedicate his reign to the Virgin Mary. This was perfectly in tune with the doctrine of the new government of the Restoration. He spent four years bringing the large canvas to completion, and he took it to the Paris Salon in October 1824, where it became the key that finally opened the door of the Paris art establishment and to his career as an official painter.  The Vow of Louis XIII (1824), Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Montauban Paris The Vow of Louis XIII in the Salon of 1824 finally brought Ingres critical success. Although Stendhal complained about "the sort of material beauty which excludes the idea of divinity", most critics praised the work. The journalist and future Prime Minister and French President Adolphe Thiers celebrated the breakthrough of a new style: "Nothing is better than variety like this, the essential character of the new style." In January 1825 he was awarded the Cross of the Légion d'honneur by Charles X, and in June 1825 he was elected a member of Académie des Beaux-Arts. Lithographs of La Grande Odalisque published in 1826 in two competing versions by Delpech and Sudré found eager buyers; Ingres received 24,000 francs for the reproduction rights – twenty times the amount he had been paid for the original painting six years earlier. The 1824 Salon also brought forward a counter-current to the neoclassicism of Ingres: Eugène Delacroix exhibited Les Massacres de Scio, in a romantic style sharply contrasting to that of Ingres. The success of Ingres's painting led in 1826 to a major new commission, The Apotheosis of Homer, a giant canvas which celebrated all the great artists of history, intended to decorate the ceiling of one of the halls of the Museum Charles X at the Louvre. Ingres was unable to finish the work in time for the 1827 Salon, but displayed the painting in grisaille.The 1827 Salon became a confrontation between the neoclassicism of Ingres's Apotheosis and a new manifesto of romanticism by Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus. Ingres joined the battle with enthusiasm; he called Delacroix "the apostle of ugliness" and told friends that he recognized "the talent, the honorable character and distinguished spirit" of Delacroix, but that "he has tendencies which I believe are dangerous and which I must push back." Despite the considerable patronage he enjoyed under the Bourbon government, Ingres welcomed the July Revolution of 1830.That the outcome of the Revolution was not a republic but a constitutional monarchy was satisfactory to the essentially conservative and pacifistic artist, who in a letter to a friend in August 1830 criticized agitators who "still want to soil and disturb the order and happiness of a freedom so gloriously, so divinely won." Ingres's career was little affected, and he continued to receive official commissions and honors under the July Monarchy. Ingres exhibited in the Salon of 1833, where his portrait of Louis-François Bertin (1832) was a particular success. The public found its realism spellbinding, although some of the critics declared its naturalism vulgar and its colouring drab. In 1834 he finished a large religious painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian, which depicted the first saint to be martyred in Gaul. The painting was commissioned in 1824 by the Ministry of the Interior for the Cathedral of Autun, and the iconography in the picture was specified by the bishop. Ingres conceived the painting as the summation of all of his work and skill, and worked on it for ten years before displaying it at the 1834 Salon. He was surprised, shocked and angered by the response; the painting was attacked by both the neoclassicists and by the romantics. Ingres was accused of historical inaccuracy, for the colours, and for the feminine appearance of the Saint, who looked like a beautiful statue. In anger, Ingres announced that he would no longer accept public commissions, and that he would no longer participate in the Salon. He later did participate in some semi-public expositions and a retrospective of his work at the 1855 Paris International Exposition, but never again took part in the Salon or submitted his work for public judgement. Instead, at the end of 1834 he returned to Rome to become the Director of the Academy of France. Rome Ingres remained in Rome for six years. He devoted much of his attention to the training of the painting students, as he was later to do at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He re-organized the Academy, increased the size of the library, added many molds of classical statues to the Academy collection, and assisted the students in getting public commissions in both Rome and Paris. He traveled to Orvieto (1835), Sienna (1835), Ravenna and Urbino to study the paleochristian mosaics, medieval murals and Renaissance art. He devoted considerable attention to music, one of the subjects of the academy; he welcomed Franz Liszt and Fanny Mendelssohn. He formed a long friendship with Liszt. The composer Charles Gounod, who was a pensioner at the time at the Academy, described Ingres's appreciation of modern music, including Weber and Berlioz, and his adoration for Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Gluck. He joined the music students and his friend Niccolò Paganini in playing Beethoven's violin works. Gounod wrote that Ingres "had the tenderness of an infant and the indignation of an apostle." When Stendhal visited the Academy and disparaged Beethoven, Ingres turned to the doorman, indicated Stendahl, and told him, "If this gentleman ever calls again, I am not here." His rancor against the Paris art establishment for his failure at the 1834 Salon did not abate. In 1836 he refused a major commission from the French Minister of the Interior, Adolphe Thiers, to decorate the interior of the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, because the commission had been offered first to a rival, Paul Delaroche, who refused it. He did complete a small number of works which he sent to patrons in Paris. One was L'Odalisque et l'esclave, (1839), a portrait of a blonde odalisque, or member of a harem, who reclines languorously while a turbaned musician plays. This fitted into the popular genre of orientalism; his rival Eugène Delacroix had created a painting on a similar theme, Les Femmes d'Alger, for the 1834 Salon. The setting was inspired by Persian miniatures and was full of exotic detail, but the woman's long reclining form was pure Ingres. The critic Théophile Gautier wrote of Ingres's work: "It is impossible to better paint the mystery, the silence and the suffocating atmosphere of the seraglio." In 1842 he painted a second version, nearly identical to the first but with a landscape background (painted by his student Paul Flandrin)  L'Odalisque et l'esclave, Odalisque with Slave (1842), oil on canvas, 76 x 105 cm, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore The second painting he sent, in 1840, was The Illness of Antiochus (1840; also known as Aniochus and Stratonice) a history painting on a theme of love and sacrifice, a theme once painted by David in 1800, when Ingres was in his studio. It was commissioned by the Duc d'Orleans, the son of King Louis Philippe I), and had very elaborate architectural background designed by one of the Academy students, Victor Baltard, the future architect of the Paris market Les Halles. The central figure was an ethereal woman in white, whose contemplative pose with her hand on her chin recurs in some of Ingres's female portraits. His painting of Aniochius and Stratonice, despite its small size, just one meter, was a major success for Ingres. In August it was shown in the private apartment of the duc d'Orléans in the Pavilion Marsan of the Palais des Tuileries. The King greeted him personally at Versailles and gave him a tour of the Palace. He was offered a commission to paint a portrait of the Duke, the heir to the throne, and another from the Duc de Lunyes to create two huge murals for the Château de Dampierre. In April 1841 he returned definitively to Paris.  Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville (1845), Frick Collection, New York Paris, Last years One of the first works executed after his return to Paris was a portrait of the duc d'Orléans. After the heir to the throne was killed in a carriage accident a few months after the painting was completed in 1842, Ingres received commissions to make additional copies. He also received a commission to design seventeen stained glass windows for the chapel on the place where the accident occurred, and a commission for eight additional stained-glass designs for Orléans chapel in Dreux. He became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He took his students frequently to the Louvre to see the classical and Renaissance art, instructing them to look straight ahead and to avoid the works of Rubens, which he believed deviated too far from the true values of art. The Revolution of 1848, which overthrew Louis Philippe and created the French Second Republic, had little effect on his work or his ideas. He declared that the revolutionaries were "cannibals who called themselves French", but during the Revolution completed his Vénus Anadyoméne, which he had started as an academic study in 1808. It represented Venus, rising from the sea which had given birth to her, surrounded by cherubs. He welcomed the patronage of the new government of Louis-Napoleon, who would in 1852 become Emperor Napoleon III.  Vénus Anadyoméne by Dominique Ingres, 1848 1849 Ingres lost his wife and in October 1851 he resigned as professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1852, Ingres, then seventy-one years of age, married forty-three-year-old Delphine Ramel, a relative of his friend Marcotte d'Argenteuil. Ingres was rejuvenated, and in the decade that followed he completed several significant works, including the portrait of Princesse Albert de Broglie. In 1853 he began the Apotheosis of Napoleon I, for the ceiling of a hall in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. (It was destroyed in May 1871 when the Paris Commune set fire to the building.) With the help of assistants, in 1854 he completed another history painting, Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII. A retrospective of his works was featured at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1855, and in the same year Napoleon III named him a Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur.  The Princesse de Broglie, née Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, 1853, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York  The Source (1856), Musée d'Orsay, Paris He continued to rework and refine his classic themes. In 1856 Ingres completed The Source (The Spring), a painting begun in 1820 and closely related to his Venus Anadyoméne. He painted two versions of Louis XIV and Molière (1857 and 1860), and produced variant copies of several of his earlier compositions. These included religious works in which the figure of the Virgin from The Vow of Louis XIII was reprised: The Virgin of the Adoption of 1858 was followed by The Virgin Crowned and The Virgin with Child. In 1859 he produced new versions of The Virgin of the Host, and in 1862 he completed Christ and the Doctors, a work commissioned many years before by Queen Marie Amalie for the chapel of Bizy. He painted small replicas of Paolo and Francesca and Oedipus and the Sphinx. In 1862 he completed a small oil-on-paper version of The Golden Age. The last of his important portrait paintings date from this period: Marie-Clothilde-Inés de Foucauld, Madame Moitessier, Seated (1856), Self-Portrait at the Age of Seventy-eight and Madame J.-A.-D. Ingres, both completed in 1859. At the request of the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, he made his own-self portrait in 1858. The only colour in the painting is the red of his rosette of the Legion of Honour. In 1862 he was awarded the title of Senator, and made a member of the Imperial Council on Public Instruction. Three of his works were shown in the London International Exhibition, and his reputation as a major French painter was confirmed once more. Near the end of his life, he made one of his best-known masterpieces, The Turkish Bath. It reprised a figure and theme he had been paint.  Mme. Moitessier, 1856 BiographieJean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres est né à Montauban le 29 août 17802. Son père, le peintre et sculpteur Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres, a favorisé ses penchants artistiques. Il entre en 1791 à l’Académie de Toulouse où il est formé par Jean Suau, puis se rend à Paris, en 1796, pour étudier sous la direction de Jacques-Louis David. Il s’éloigne de son néo-classicisme par son dévouement à un idéal de beauté fondé sur de difficiles harmonies de lignes et de couleurs. Il peint le portrait d'amis ainsi que de Pierre-François Bernier, qu'il connaît de Montauban. Il remporte le prix de Rome à sa deuxième tentative en 1801 avec Les Ambassadeurs d'Agamemnon, mais il ne peut s'y rendre immédiatement. Il s'installe avec d'autres élèves de David à l'ancien couvent des Capucines où il peint principalement des portraits.  The Turkish Bath (1862–63), The Louvre En juin 1806, il se fiance avec Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier, mais sa relation ne résiste pas à son absence après son départ pour Rome en septembre. En 1806, Ingres découvre à Rome, Raphaël et le Quattrocento, qui marquent définitivement son style. Ces années de travail sont les plus fécondes avec les nus, parmi lesquels La Baigneuse, les paysages, les dessins, les portraits et les compositions historiques. Il est en pleine possession de son art et son séjour à Rome est aussi l'occasion de tisser des liens amicaux avec les grands commis de l'administration impériale : le comte de Tournon et sa mère, Edme Bochet et sa sœur Cécile Bochet madame Henry Panckoucke, Hippolyte-François Devillers, le baron de Montbreton de Norvins. En France, cependant, ses toiles peintes en Italie ne plaisent pas. L’artiste décide alors de rester à Rome. Il se marie en 1813 avec Madeleine Chapelle (1782-1849), une jeune modiste habitant Guéret. Ingres réalisa dix portraits de sa femme. Mais le plus célèbre tableau sur lequel elle apparait est Le Bain turc. Madeleine pose pour l'odalisque aux bras levés qui s'étire au premier plan. Le tableau a été réalisé en 1862, après la mort de Madeleine. Elle fut peinte d'après un croquis qu'Ingres avait réalisé en 1818. En 1850, il va à Châlons chez sa belle-mère pour connaître les lieux où sa femme a vécu, et y rencontre le notaire Louois Changy. Il semble y être retourné l'année suivante. À la chute de Napoléon Ier, des difficultés économiques et familiales l’entraînent dans une période financièrement difficile pendant laquelle il peint, avec acharnement, tout ce qu’on lui commande. Il sollicite ses amitiés romaines et ses bonnes relations avec les Panckoucke et les Bochet lui présentent Charles Marcotte d'Argenteuil, ami de Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux, ami proche d'Ingres. Très vite, Charles Marcotte d'Argenteuil devient un proche du peintre, jusqu'à devenir un de ses principaux mécènes jusqu'à son décès en 1864. Après la mort de Madeleine, ce dernier ira même jusqu'à lui présenter sa nièce, Delphine Ramel, qu'Ingres épousera le 15 avril 1852. De ce mariage, viendra la décision d'acheter la maison de Meung-sur-Loire avec son nouveau beau-frère, Jean-François Guille, notaire et conseiller général du Loiret, où il se retirera tous les étés pour bénéficier de la douceur et de la lumière de la Loire. Nombre de membres de la famille Marcotte seront de fidèles acheteurs, comme Philippe Marcotte de Quivières et ses frères Marcotte de Sainte-Marie et Marcotte de Genlis, le baron Charles Athanase Walckenaer, Alexandre Legentil et le baron Hubert Rohault de Fleury (tous deux initiateurs du projet de la basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre), Cécile Bochet, devenue madame Henry Panckoucke et baronne Morande-Forgeot, et le clan Ramel. En 1820, il quitte Rome pour Florence où il réside jusqu'en 1824.  Portrait of Charles Marcotte (1810), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Il trouve finalement le succès en France avec son Vœu de Louis XIII exposé au Salon de 1824, destiné à la cathédrale de Montauban. Il devient directeur de l’Académie de France à Rome de 1835 à 1840. Appelé, le 25 mai 1862, à faire partie du Sénat impérial, il y vota jusqu'à sa mort conformément aux vœux du pouvoir. Il avait été élevé au grade de grand officier de la Légion d'honneur le 14 novembre 1855. Ingres attache au dessin une grande importance et déclarait à ce sujet : « Une chose bien dessinée est toujours assez bien peinte. » La galerie de portraits réalistes qu’il laisse, constitue un miroir de la société bourgeoise de son temps, de l’esprit et des mœurs d’une classe à laquelle il appartient et dont il trace les vertus et les limites. Ingres s’intéresse beaucoup à la texture des vêtements et des étoffes (velours, soie, satin, cachemire…) qu’il intègre dans ses œuvres afin de noter la classe sociale du personnage. Il s’inspire, à ses débuts, de l'esthétique de l’art grec, avant de se tourner vers une approche plus souple des courbes et des drapés. Ingres n'hésitait pas à accentuer l'anatomie de ses modèles pour atteindre son idéal de beauté ; ainsi, il rajouta trois vertèbres à sa Grande Odalisque. Ingres reçoit à partir de 1824 honneurs et commandes officielles. Il n'abandonne cependant pas le portrait dont celui de Monsieur Bertin, de 1832, est un sommet.  Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832), the Louvre Le rejet par la critique et par le public, de sa dernière peinture d'histoire Le Martyre de Saint Symphorien exposée au Salon de 1834, le détermine à accepter la direction de l'Académie de France à Rome, où il reste jusqu'en 1845. De retour à Paris, il peint à nouveau des portraits et reçoit à nouveau des commandes de grandes œuvres décoratives . Il se détache du néo-classicisme par la subordination de la forme à l'expression, simplifiant ou déformant l'anatomie pour se rapprocher de l'expression du caractère individuel. Il s'oppose aussi à l'enseignement officiel sur la nature du beau idéal. Pour l'Académie, celui-ci se traduit par un jeu de proportions canoniques, et la profondeur du savoir du peintre s'obtient par la connaissance de l'anatomie artistique, tandis qu'Ingres réprouve l'étude de l'intérieur du corps humain au profit de l'observation fine de la morphologie10, qui aboutit à représenter non pas un idéal générique, mais celui correspondant à l'individualité du modèle, et pratique la simplification des formes, condamnant la représentation du détail à l'intérieur du modelé. Dominique Ingres est aussi violoniste et devient, durant un temps, deuxième violon à l’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse. De ce loisir est née l’expression « violon d’Ingres ».  Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII, 1854, Louvre  Biography of Martin Beaupre Martin Beaupré was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1961. Over the years Martin has found his point of balance by associating art with energy. As a full-time painter Martin’s paintings are a reflection of his inner world. Martin takes us on a Zen journey which reveals a search for beauty and harmony in muffled tones, with serene, uncluttered compositions. In 1995, Martin founded the Médit’Art workshop, where he teaches modern and intuitive painting. Martin has also moderated art therapy workshops for amateur and professional painters, in the deserts of the United States and in the tropics of Hawaii. Private and corporate collectors from all over the world find Martin’s contemporary canvases arouse profound emotions. Thanks to his accomplished mastery of colors and his completely resistance-free approach. Martin’s paintings combine energy and dynamism with tranquility and serenity. The preferred luminous intensity is white, because it offers the possibility of attaining the infinite. Martin works in various mediums: oil, modeling clay, sable, Swarovski crystal and ink. Martin Beaupré has met with Buddhist monks in Thailand and Japan who have become a great source of inspiration. Martin believes the principles of Japanese art are sacred. The secret which lends power to his art is this: the void is to be embellished, but never filled. Create the maximum effect with the minimum means. Inspired by travels, Martin creates canvases imbued with Asian culture. We find works showing flowering cherry-trees, mountains, Buddha’s faces, geishas, and symbols and writings inspired by Zenga. Nothing is left to chance; there is a reason behind every detail. One thing is for certain, there is never a confrontation between form and space. Everything coexists, everything is connected. Impression of calm, instant of grace, mastery of life, everything is softened. Martin Beaupré offers us a mystical operation of the senses, a sort of voyage to the borders of the equilibrium and the immensity which reside within us. An intense poetry to be lived and explored!    
Martin Beaupré est né au Canada, à Québec en 1961. Il trouve son équilibre en associant art et énergie. Sa peinture est le reflet de son monde intérieur. Un parcours zen où se révèle la recherche de la beauté et de l'harmonie dans des tonalités feutrées, des compositions épurées et sereines. Martin Beaupré prend plaisir à transmettre sa passion et vit maintenant de son art à plein temps. En 1995, il a fondé les ateliers Médit'Art, où il enseigna la peinture moderne et intuitive. Il a offert aussi des ateliers d'art thérapie pour peintres amateurs et professionnels, dans les déserts des États-Unis et à Hawaii. Grâce à sa grande maîtrise des couleurs et à son approche libre de toutes résistances, ses toiles contemporaines suscitent de profondes émotions. Ce peintre conjugue l'énergie et le dynamisme avec le calme et la sérénité. Inspiré par ses voyages, il crée des toiles empreintes de la culture asiatique. Cerisiers en fleurs, montagnes, visages de Bouddha, geishas, ainsi que symboles et écritures inspirés du Zenga composent ses oeuvres. Rien n'est laissé au hasard, chaque détail a sa raison d'être. Martin Beau Pré a fait la rencontre de moines bouddhistes en Thaïlande et au Japon qui sont devenus une grande source d'inspiration pour lui. Les principes de l'art Japonais sont sacrés à ses yeux. Le secret qui donne puissance à son art : embellir le vide et ne jamais remplir le vide. Créer le maximum d'effet avec le minimum de moyen. L'intensité lumineuse qu'il préfère est le blanc parce qu'il lui offre les possibilités d'une rencontre avec l'infini. Ses tableaux respirent la quiétude. Il travail avec plusieurs médiums : l'huile, pâte de modelage, sable, cristal de Swarovsky, encre. Dans ses toiles, la forme et l'espace ne sont jamais en confrontation. Tout coexiste, tout est lié. Impression de calme, instant de grâce, maîtrise de sa vie, tout se dulcifie en soi. Ses tableaux sont vendus partout dans le monde et certains font partie de plusieurs collections privées ou corporatives au Canada, aux Etats-Unis, en Europe et aux Antilles. Martin Beaupré, nous propose une opération mystique des sens, une sorte de voyage vers les frontières de l'équilibre et de l'immensité qui nous habite. Une intense poésie à vivre et à découvrir!   |
