Joaquín Sorolla Portraits 3 E-Book

Cristina Berna

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 252

Beschreibung

Joaquín Sorolla (born in Valencia 1863 - died in Cercedilla 1923) is one of the most successful Spanish painters ever. He was a genius in capturing the essence of the scene he was painting. In Joaquín Sorolla Portraits 3 1911 -1920 Sorolla paints still paints many important portraits although in the course of preparing for his grand masterpiece "The Vision of Spain", which hangs in the Hispanic Society of America, he did not have the same amount of time available. Sorolla also indulged in painting gardens as relaxation from the gigantic "The Vision of Spain" project. The portraits provide a deep and interesting look into both American and Spanish society in this period. In his early years Sorolla often showed social realism, in his culmination period showed the increasingly wealthy sitters that came to him and in his final period he is a celebrated portraitist of rich Americans and a cultural and political elite in Spain.

Leseprobe

About the authors

Cristina Berna loves photographing and writing. She writes to entertain a diverse audience.

Eric Thomsen has published in science, economics and law, created exhibitions and arranged concerts.

Also by the authors:

World of Cakes

Luxembourg – a piece of cake

Florida Cakes

Catalan Pastis – Catalonian Cakes

Andalucian Delight

World of Art

Hokusai – 36 Views of Mt Fuji

Hokusai - 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō

Hiroshige 69 Stations of the Nakasendō

Hiroshige 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō

Hiroshige 100 Famous Views of Edo

Hiroshige Famous Vies of the Sixty-Odd Provinces

Hiroshige 36 Views of Mt Fuji 1852

Hiroshige 36 Views of Mt Fuji 1858

Kunisada - 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō

Hiroshige – Kunisada Two Brushes Tōkaidō

Joaquin Sorolla Landscapes

Joaquin Sorolla Beach

Joaquin Sorolla Beach More

Joaquin Sorolla Boats

Joaquin Sorolla Animals

Joaquin Sorolla Family

Joaquin Sorolla Nudes

Joaquin Sorolla Portraits

Joaquin Sorolla Painter

Joaquin Sorolla Wine

Joaquin Sorolla Religion

and more titles

Outpets

Deer in Dyrehaven – Outpets in Denmark

Florida Outpets

Birds of Play

Christmas Nativity and Christmas Markets

Christmas Nativity – Spain

Christmas Nativity United States

Christmas Nativity Hallstatt

Christmas Nativity Salzburg

Christmas Nativity Slovenia

Christmas Market Innsbruck

Christmas Market Vienna

Christmas Market Salzburg

Christmas Market Slovenia

and more titles

Missy’s Clan

Missy’s Clan – The Beginning

Missy’s Clan – Christmas

Missy’s Clan – Education

Missy’s Clan – Kittens

Missy’s Clan – Deer Friends

Missy’s Clan – Outpets

Missy’s Clan – Outpet Birds

and more titles

Vehicles

Copenhagen vehicles – and a trip to Sweden

Construction vehicles picture book

and more titles

Contact the authors

[email protected]

Published by www.missysclan.net

Cover picture:

Front: " Retrato de Carlos Urcola Ibarra con su hija Eulalia", 1914

Rear: “Don Pio Baroja”, 1914

Inside: “Portrait of Mrs Orville E Babcock”, 1911 (detail)

Content

Introduction

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Joaquín de Sorolla y Bastida 190 José Jiménez Aranda

Self Portrait

1912 (detail)

“Louis Comfort Tiffany”

1911

“

Market Day Outside the Walls

” 1873 Louis Comfort Tiffany

“Ella J. Seligmann

(Portrait of a Woman)

”

1913

"Jacques (Jakob) Seligmann"

1911

“

Maria Caterina Brignole

” Unknown artist

“

Victoria Eugenia, Queen of Spain

” 1911

“Queen Victoria Eugenia” 1927 Philip de László

“

Miss Mary Lillian Duke

(Mrs Mary Duke Biddle)” 1911

“Mrs Ira Nelson Morris and Her Children”

1911

“

Essie, Ruby and Ferdinand Wertheimer

” 1900 Singer Sargent

“

Madame X

” 1883-1884 Singer Sargent

“

The Herd Quitter

” 1897 C M Russel

“

Portrait of Ágota Fischhof

” 1918 László Moholy-Nagy

“

La Femme en bleu

” 1912 Fernand Léger

“La femme enceinte (Maternité)” 1913 Marc Chagall

“

Janet Law

” 1799 Henry Raeburn

“Portrait of Mrs Orville F Babcock”

1911

“

Adele Bloch-Bauer

” 1907 Gustav Klimt

“

The Assault on Fort Sanders

” 1863 Kurz and Allison

“Ralph Clarkson”

1911

“

Café au lait au frais

” 1892-1894 Ralph Clarkson

“

The physicist, Albert Michelson

” before 1931 Ralph Clarkson

“

Nouvart Dzeron, a Daughter of Armenia

” 1912 Ralph Clarkson

“

Le Bain Turc

” 1862 Jean August Ingres

“

Murder in the Seraglio

” 1874 Ferdnand Cormon

"

Mujer con mantilla negra

" 1912

“

Doña Isabel Lobo Velasco de Porcel

” c. 1805 Francisco Goya

“

Miguel de Unamuno

" 1912

"

The Drunkard, Zarauz

(El Borracho, Zarauz)" 1910

"

Thomas Fortune Ryan

" 1913

“Retrato de la señora amiga de Mr Ryan

” 1913

"

Portrait of Juez Rafael Altamira y Crevea

" 1913

“

Retrato de Carlos Urcola Ibarra con su hija Eulalia

” 1914

“Regla Majon, Countess of Librija”

1914

“Don Pio Baroja

” 1914

“El Tres de Mayo

” 3 May 1808, by Francisco Goya 1814

"

José Martinez Ruiz

(Azorin)" 1917

"

La Golecha

" by Monovar

“Retrato de la cantate Raquel Meller”

1918

"

Fisherwoman from Valencia

" 1916

“Fisherwoman on Chiemsee

” 1879 Johann Friedrich Engel

”

“La Bilbainita“ 1917

“

La Catedral de Burgos

” 1910

“

Portrait of Zenobia Camprubí Aymar

”

1918

“Maria Muntadas de Capará”

1927

“

5th Avenue

”

1911

“

Juan Ramón Jiménez

”

1916

“Ramón Menéndez Pidal

” 1917

“Landscape with figures, Asturias

” 1903

“Jose Ortega y Gasset” 1918

“First women's suffrage petition 1860” Newcombe 1910

“

The Little Weaver

” 1882, Juan Planella y Rodríguez

“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews” 1748, Thomas Gainsborough

“

Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg en el palco de Teatro Real

”

“Portrait of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and his mother”

1901

“Jura de la Constitución por S.M. la Reina Regente”

1897

"Alfonso XII, rey de España"

1897 ) Román Navarro

“

Portrait of Alfonso XII

” 1884 José Casado del Alisal

“

Investiture of Alfonso XII

” 1885 Joaquín Sigüenza

“Antonio Cánovas del Castillo

” 1883 José Casado del Alisal

“María de las Mercedes de Orleans

” 1878 José D Belgrano

“Las hijas del duque de Montpensier”

1855 Alfred Dehodencq

"Antonio Machado" 1918

“

Jose Luis Mariano Benlliure Arana

" 1919-1920

"

Mariano Benlliure y Gil

" unknown date

"

Lucretia Arana

" 1919-1920

“

José Benillure y Gil” 1917 self portrait

"Don Amalio Gimeno" 1919

“

De triomf van de Doods

” 1562 Pieter Brueghel

“Christ Healing the Blind

” 1570s, El Greco

“Clotilde con un mantilla negra

” 1919-1920

"

Gregorio Maranon Posadillo”

1920

"

Dauphin Louis Charles of France

" 1792 Alexander Kucharsky

“

La Señora de Perez de Ayala (Mabel Rick)”

"

Garden

"

“Ramón Pérez de Ayala

” 1920

References

Photo credits

Introduction

Joaquín Sorolla (born in Valencia 1863 - died in Cercedilla 1923) is one of the most successful Spanish painters ever. He was a genius in capturing the essence of the scene he was painting.

In Joaquín Sorolla Portraits 3 1911 -1920 Sorolla paints still paints many important portraits although in the course of preparing for his grand masterpiece “The Vision of Spain”, which hangs in the Hispanic Society of America, he did not have the same amount of time available. Sorolla also indulged in painting gardens as relaxation from the gigantic “The Vision of Spain” project.

The portraits provide a deep and interesting look into both American and Spanish society in this period. In his early years Sorolla often showed social realism, in his culmination period showed the increasingly wealthy sitters that came to him and in his final period he is a celebrated portraitist of rich Americans and a cultural and political elite in Spain.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (born 27 February 1863 in Valencia – died 10 August 1923 in Cercedilla, Madrid) 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 his native land and sunlit water.

Sorolla was the eldest child born to a tradesman, also named Joaquin Sorolla, and his wife, Concepción Bastida. His sister, Concha, was born a year later. In August 1865, both children were orphaned when their parents died, possibly from cholera. They were then cared for by their maternal aunt and uncle, a locksmith.

He received his initial art education at the age of 9 in his native town, and then under a succession of teachers including Cayetano Capuz and Salustiano Asenjo. At the age of eighteen he traveled to Madrid, vigorously studying master paintings in the Museo del Prado. After completing his military service, Sorolla, at age twenty-two, obtained a grant which enabled a four-year term to study painting in Rome, Italy, where he was welcomed by and found stability in the example of Francisco Pradilla, the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome. A long sojourn to Paris in 1885 provided his first exposure to modern painting; of special influence were exhibitions of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Adolf von Menzel. Back in Rome he studied with José Benlliure, Emilio Sala and Jose Vellegas Cordero.

In 1888, Sorolla returned to Valencia to marry Clotilde García del Castillo, whom he had first met in 1879, while working in her father's studio. By 1895, they would have three children together: Maria, born in 1890, Joaquín, born in 1892, and Elena, born in 1895. In 1890, they moved to Madrid, and for the next decade Sorolla's efforts as an artist were focused mainly on the production of large canvases of orientalist, mythological, historical, and social subjects, for display in salons and international exhibitions in Madrid, Paris, Venice, Munich, Berlin and Chicago.

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, where it was acquired and subsequently donated to the Washington University Museum in St Louis, Missouri. 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.

Portrait of the painter Joaquín de Sorolla y Bastida by José Jiménez Aranda in 1901, image: Alonso de Mendoza

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.

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 subject was a depiction of crippled children bathing at the sea in Valencia, under the supervision of a monk. They are the victims of hereditary syphilis the title implies, perhaps. Campos has suggested that the polio epidemic that struck the land of Valencia some years earlier is present, possibly for the first time in the history of painting, through the image of two affected children. 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.

A series of preparatory oil sketches for Sad Inheritance were painted with the greatest luminosity and bravura, and foretold an increasing interest in shimmering light and of a medium deftly handled. Sorolla thought well enough of these sketches that he presented two of them as gifts to American artists; one to John Singer Sargent, the other to William Merritt Chase. After this painting Sorolla never returned to a theme of such overt social consciousness.

The exhibit at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 won him a medal of honour and his nomination as Knight of the Legion of Honour, 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.

A special exhibition of his works—figure subjects, landscapes and portraits—at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris in 1906 eclipsed all his earlier successes and led to his appointment as Officer of the Legion of Honour. The show included nearly 500 works, early paintings as well as recent sun-drenched beach scenes, landscapes, and portraits, a productivity which amazed critics and was a financial triumph. Though subsequent large-scale exhibitions in Germany and London were greeted with more restraint, while in England in 1908 Sorolla met Archer Milton Huntington, who made him a member of The Hispanic Society of America in New York, and invited him to exhibit there in 1909. The exhibition comprised 356 paintings, 195 of which sold. Sorolla spent five months in America and painted more than twenty portraits. Sorolla's work is often exhibited together with that of his contemporaries and friends, John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn.

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, and the portrayal of his family was irresistible. 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). A series of portraits produced in the United States in 1909, commissioned through the Hispanic Society of America, was capped by the Portrait of Mr. Taft, President of the United States This portrait, which was painted at the White House, is on permanent display at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The appearance of sunlight could be counted on to rouse his interest, and 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.

Early in 1911, Sorolla visited the United States for a second time, and exhibited 152 new paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum and 161 at the Art Institute of Chicago a few weeks later. Later that year Sorolla met Archie Huntington in Paris and signed a contract to paint a series of oils on life in Spain. 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 (3.65/4.27 x 69 m). The major commission of his career, it would dominate the later years of Sorolla's life.

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, Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, Elche ,Seville, Andalusia, Extremadura, Galicia, Guipuzca, Castile, León, 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. By 1917 he was, by his own admission, exhausted. He completed the final panel by July 1919.

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.

The Sorolla Room, housing the Provinces of Spain at the Hispanic Society of America, opened to the public in 1926. The room closed for remodeling in 2008, and the murals toured museums in Spain for the first time. The Sorolla Room reopened in 2010, with the murals on permanent display.

Sorolla's influence on some other Spanish painters, such as Alberto Play Rubio and Julio Romero de Torres, was so noted that they are described as "sorollista."

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.

The Spanish National Dance Company honored the painter's The Provinces of Spain by producing a ballet Sorolla based on the paintings. A high-speed RENFE train station has been named after Sorolla in Valencia.

Final period (1911-1920)

Visión de España incl

"Castilla: la fiesta del pan" (1913)

"Sevilla: Los nazarenos" (1914)

"Aragón: La jota" (1914)

"Navarra: El concejo del Roncal" (1914)

"Guipúzcua: Los bolos" (1914)

"Andalucía: El encierro" (1914)

"Sevilla: el baile" (1915)

"Sevilla: Los toreros" (1915)

"Galicia: La romería" (1915)

"Cataluña: El pescado" (1915)

"Valencia: Las grupas" (1916)

"Extremadura: El mercado'(1917)

"Elche: El palmeral' (1918-1919)

"Ayamonte: La pesca del atún" (1919)

Some other major works

Después del baño

(1911)

Fifth Avenue, Nueva York

(1911)

Tipos del Roncal

(1912)

La Siesta

(1912)

Pescadoras valencianas

(1915)

Lavanderas de Galicia

(1915)

Niña entrando en el baño

(1915)

Jardín de la Casa Sorolla

(c. 1916)

La bata rosa (1916)

El patio de Comares, la Alhambra de Granada

(1917)

Capilla de la finca de Láchar

(1917)

Rompeolas, San Sebastián

(1917-1918)

Joaquín Sorolla y García sentado

(1917)

Patio de la casa Sorolla

(1917)

Alberca del Alcázar de Sevilla

(1918)

Jardín de la Casa Sorolla

(1918-1919)

Helena en la cala de San Vicente, Mallorca

(1919)

Jardín de la Casa Sorolla

(1920)

Self Portrait 1912

Louis Comfort Tiffany1911 Height: 150.5 cm Width: 225.4 cmHispanic Society of America, New YorkImage: Wmpearl

Louis Comfort Tiffany’s art was vast, original and dramatic. Often he is thought of as Art Nouveau as he also worked in stained glass, mosaic, tapestry, wood, metal, pottery, enamel and jewelry apart from oil and watercolor. He had a great love of Nature – plants, birds and insects. His father founded the jewelry firm Tiffany & Co. which has just been sold to French LMVH group (2020).

Sorolla’s portrait of Louis Comfort Tiffany is a masterpiece. Its broad expanse of colorful yellow, white, and blue flowers, the deep blue of the waters of Long Island Sound flashing in the background, and the complex whites of Tiffany's summer suit create a work of irresistible attraction. Tiffany's steady gaze engages the viewer as he pauses at his easel, palette and brushes in one hand, the brush with which he works in the other. The setting, the garden of Tiffany's home on the North shore of Long Island, also fulfilled Sorolla's preference to paint "even portraits" outdoors. In picturing Tiffany amid the profusion of garden flowers, Sorolla created a range of shadings in Tiffany's white suit and the even lighter white of his shirt and his cuffs as these whites vividly reflect and hold the diverse colors of Tiffany's surroundings. The men had probably met at Sorolla's Hispanic Society exhibition early in 1909, when Tiffany bought no fewer than four paintings. But not until Sorolla returned to New York could the portrait session with Tiffany be scheduled in May 1911. For many years, this portrait of Tiffany remained in the central Moorish-style patio at Laurelton Hall installed mere steps away from where it was painted.

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco, 1873, 81.5 x 142.2 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, image: Alonso de Mendoza

Louis Tiffany started out as a painter and visited Tangiers in present day Morocco, where he was inspired by the local art. It was a romantic dream he experienced in a wild society that had been tamed by the French and Spanish after the Americans and Swedes had fought the Barbary Wars against the Barbary statelets Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli (1801 - 1815). Until then these Islamic pirate states attacked Christian Europe and took perhaps more than 1.5 million Christians as slaves. To understand Islam one most read the Quran and other texts. The Quran contains more than 400 verses urging violence against Christians.

Architectural Elements from Laurelton Hall, Oyster Bay, New York, the mansion built by Louis Comfort Tiffany, MET, image: Pharos

The famed Horseshoe arches in Cordoba that are hailed as the supreme expression of Islamic Art are not Muslim at all. They were made by Spanish slaves after the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711 AD. The Muslims didn’t create anything, instead they razed all Visigoth churches and cathedrals to the ground. The Cordoba Cathedral includes elements of a Muslim mosque built on the site of the Visigoth cathedral and has these Visigoth horse shoe arches which have been widely copied.

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Angel of the Resurrection, the window, the lower half of which appears here, was installed in 1905 at the First Presbyterian Church, 16th and Delaware Streets, Indianapolis, image: File Upload Bot (Kaldari)

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) was one of America's preeminent masters of the decorative arts. Although he is best known for his prodigious achievements in glass, especially for his vibrantly colored windows and lamps, Tiffany excelled in a wide range of media—mosaics, enamels, metalwork, ceramics, and jewelry. What was shared between Sorolla and Louis C Tiffany was the Christian religion and a love of gardens. Louis Comfort Tiffany began his career as a painter shortly after the Civil War. He was son of the founder of the famed Tiffany and Company on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Louis Comfort Tiffany turned to interior design, and rode the crest of the burgeoning economy in the aftermath of the war, decorating homes of some of the leading figures of the day—the H. O. Havemeyers, Hamilton Fish, and Mark Twain— and undertaking such public commissions as Chester Arthur's White House and the Veterans' Room of the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City. In the 1870s he began to experiment with new forms of glassmaking, and by the 1880s the Tiffany Glass Company was the largest producer of stained-glass windows in the nation.

In the next decade Tiffany established his own glass furnaces in Corona, Queens, New York, where he developed and perfected his Favrile ware, widely celebrated for its astonishing variety of shapes, colors, and textures and for its rainbow iridescence. New techniques were introduced continuously as Tiffany drew upon his own inexhaustible creativity, perfectionism, and unconventionalism to produce works that are now treasured for their grace and originality.

Collection of Tiffany lamps, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, image: Fopseh

In 1901 Tiffany acknowledged that "an important part of the work of the studios is the artistic treatment of artificial light." From the beginning of his career as a designer he had shown an interest in controlling natural and artificial light, and especially in the use of glass for diffusing it. During the 1880s he worked with Thomas Edison on the first theater to install electric lights. Tiffany's leaded-glass shades with floral motifs combined soft illumination with delicate artistry and are among the most prized of all Tiffany creations. His work in glass led to the development of beautiful iridescent mosaics, and he created shimmering golden surfaces for enamels. Tiffany was also an innovator in jewelry design, for which he preferred semi-precious stones, often in ingenious settings, to the more fashionable large gems favored by Tiffany and Company.

Jewelry by Louis Comfort Tiffany for Tiffany & Co.

Ella J. Seligmann (Portrait of a Woman) 1913 Oil on canvas, 140 cm x 100 cm.

During his trip to Paris in the Autumn of 1913 Sorolla painted the wife of Jacques Seligmann, a leading art dealer of German origin who is mentioned as Sorolla’s British dealer, emphasising her beauty and elegance through the use of a restrained background painted with very loose brushstrokes. Impasto is reserved for the brightest areas such as the flesh tones and the sumptuous white shawl.

The painting was recently (2019) donated to Prado Museum in Madrid by a self made German millionaire in Spain, Hans Rudolf Gerstenmaier. You might wonder why the paintings of Mrs and Mr Seligmann were not brought together.

Ella Anna Seligmann was born Grünebaum on 3 August 1874 in Homburg es monts, Germany. The Seligmanns had a daughter and a son and Seligmann had three earlier children as well.

Jacob Seligmann was born in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, Hesse, in Germany 18 September 1858 and died in New York 31 October 1923. He was first married to Blanche Falkenberg, who died in Paris in 1902, then Ella Anna Grünebaum.

Other entries claim Seligmann died in Paris.

Jacques (Jakob) Seligmann1911, Oil on canvas, 1.5 cm x 42.5 cm, given to the Musée Goya, Castres, France by François-Gérard Seligmann in 1975

Jacques (Jacob) Seligmann (18 September 1858, in Frankfurt-am-Main – 30 October 1923, in Paris) was a highly successful antiquarian and art dealer with businesses in both Paris and New York. He was one of the first to foster American interest in building collections of European art.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Seligmann moved to Paris in 1874 where he worked for Paul Chevallier, an auctioneer, and Charles Mannheim, an art expert, before opening his own business on the Rue des Mathurins in 1880 with Edmond de Rothschild as one of his early clients. In 1900, together with his brothers Arnold and Simon, he established the firm Jacques Seligmann & Cie. which moved the same year to the Place Vendôme. Seligman opened a New York office in 1904, visiting it once a year. His customers included members of the Russian Stroganoff family, the high-flying British politician Sir Philip Sassoon and American collectors such as Benjamin Altman, William Randolph Hearst, J. P. Morgan, Henry Walters, and Joseph Widener.

Initially Seligmann dealt mainly in antiques including enamels, ivories, sculptures, tapestries and especially 18th century French furniture but paintings became increasingly important at the beginning of the 20th century. After the end of the First World War, interest in European art grew in the United States led by socialites such as Walter Arensberg, Albert C. Barnes, Louisine Havemeyer, Bertha Palmer, Duncan Phillips, and John Quinn.

Entrance of Hotel Monaco, now the Polish Embassy in Paris. Image: Gnesener1900 Princess of Monaco, Marie-Catherine de Brignole acquired the land in 1772 and asked the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart to build the palace.

In 1909, Seligmann bought the prestigious building Hôtel de Monaco where he established his headquarters and received his most important clients. The building now houses the Polish Embassy in Paris. After a dispute with his brother Arnold, there was a split in the company: Arnold continued to manage the Place Vendôme site as Arnold Seligmann & Cie. while Seligmann consolidated his activities at the Hôtel de Monaco and, in 1912, opened a new Paris office at 9 Rue de la Paix. In 1914, Seligmann opened a new office and gallery on New York's Fifth Avenue and incorporated his company in the State of New York. The same year, while in Paris, he was successful in buying a large part of Sir Richard Wallace's renowned collection which contained a variety of valuable antiques and art works. In 1920, his son Germain Seligman became a partner and president of the New York office, formally joining Jacques Seligmann & Fils. Seligmann died in Paris in October 1923. Seligmann's son in the business, Germain Seligman, was born in Paris on 25 February 1893. His mother's maiden name was Blanche Falkenberg.

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford.

The entry on Sir Richard Wallace claims that “whose widow bequeathed the entire collection to the nation” but some it went to Seligmann.

The story of the Hotel Monaco is equally fascinating. In 1772, the Princess of Monaco, Marie-Catherine de Brignole, who had just separated from her husband, Honoré-Camille Grimaldi Matignon, acquired one of the last plots of land still available at the end of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and asked Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart to build her a palace worthy of her rank and her taste and capable of withstanding the comparison with the Hôtel de Matignon that she was leaving.

On this land located between rue de Grenelle and current rue Saint-Dominique, the famous architect built two buildings - hotels; one smaller, on the edge of rue Saint-Dominique, which the Princess of Monaco bought a few years later from her brother-in-law, the Duke of Valentinois, to house her people there; the other, very tall and very beautiful, for the princess herself.

For the Hôtel de Monaco, Brongniart abandoned the classic scheme of Parisian hotels