Faces of the Belle Epoque: Brilliant portraits of an artist you may not have heard of

Giovanni Boldini (Italian Giovanni Boldini) left us delightful portraits of his famous contemporaries. The artist lived in the late 19th – early 20th century, was friends with Edgar Degas, John Sargent and Paul Elle and was one of the most famous and best-paid portrait painters of his time. “You, monsieur, are tremendously talented!” Degas once told him.

Many art historians agree with him, although today Giovanni Boldini is unjustly forgotten by the general public.

“When life puts everything in its place, Giovanni Boldini is recognized as the greatest artist of the last century. All new schools were born from him, since he was the first to use simplified lines and planes.

Gertrud Stein

Giovanni Boldini was born in Ferrara on December 31, 1842 in the family of an artist, he studied at the Florentine Academy of Arts. The turning point in his work was a visit to Paris in 1867, where he was deeply impressed by the way Édouard Manet painted. Giovanni Boldini has lived and worked in London since 1869, where he became acquainted with the art of Gainsborough and English portrait painting of the 18th century.

Here he developed his own spectacular and impetuous style of painting and achieved fame as the unsurpassed portrait painter of his time.

Sought after in Parisian high society, Giovanni Boldini managed to create refined and elegant images of graceful, sophisticated beauties and worldly dandy aesthetes. He painted in a recognizable free improvisation style with long and sharp strokes.

The atmosphere of the fin de siecle – “end of the century”, a sense of drama and fear in the eyes of daring high society beauties in luxurious toilets … Boldini’s portraits of women are dynamic and uninhibited in terms of pose, but at the same time strictly calibrated in composition and coloring. We invite you to enjoy the work of this unjustly forgotten artist and feel the atmosphere of refined decadence.

Portrait of the Countess Gabriela de Rusty, lover and muse of the artist

Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi. 1886

Portrait of Adolf Menzel

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. 1890s

Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt. Around 1880

Portrait of Lina Cavalieri1900s

Portrait of Lady Colin Campbell, 1897

Portrait of a young woman in profile

Portrait of Princess Martha Lucille Bibesco, 1911

Portrait of a seated Giuseppe Verdi, 1886

Madame Charles Max, 1890

Portrait of the painter Ernest Ange Dues, 1894

Portrait of Cleo de Merode, 1901

Portrait of James Whistler

Portrait of James Whistler, detail

Count Robert de Montesquieu, 1897

Madame Rejean, also known as Gabrielle Rejean

Morning Letter, 1884

Portrait of Gladys Deacon, 1905-1908

The artist’s most expensive painting is a portrait of Martha de Florian. It was discovered in 2010 in an apartment that had been closed for over 70 years and was auctioned for 3 million euros.

Portrait of the actress Martha de Florian, 1898

Marthe de Florian – Matilda Eloise Bezheron – was successful in Parisian society at the end of the 19th century. She adopted the pseudonym de Florian because of her son’s father, the banker de Florian. Politicians also enjoyed Martha Florian’s favor, including Prime Minister Clemenceau, and the artist Giovanni Baldini, who painted this magnificent portrait when Martha was 24 years old.

An interesting story happened in Martha’s apartment. The star of Parisian high society in the 19th century left her apartment and furnishings to her granddaughter. The apartment opened in 2010 after the death of the last owner, who had to leave Paris in 1942 to escape German occupation.

After the end of the war, the landlady stayed in southern France, but continued to pay for the Paris apartment until her death. When the heirs decided to evaluate the estate, an amazing sight appeared before their eyes – it turned out that the unique apartment had fully preserved the atmosphere of the early twentieth century.

There are many mysteries in this story. For example, why did you have to pay for a closed apartment for 70 years? The name of the last beloved also remained a mystery.

Time seems to be standing still here. Martha de Florian’s apartment has stood untouched for more than 70 years and the furnishings survive from the time Giovanni Baldini painted a portrait of the famous beauty.

Source: izbrannoe.com

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