Portrait de Collignon

Overview

The Portrait de Collignon is the portrait of her former governess, Mlle Collignon, that Marie painted in Nice in the spring of 1876, when she was seventeen. It was started on 23 May 1876 and finished on 20 June 1876. It was her first finished portrait from life: in her summing-up of her training she lists "trente-deux leçons ... de peinture avec Katorbinsky à Rome. Ensuite le portrait de Collignon et puis ? Rien" (076.0447-0448, 19 December 1877). Where the picture is now is not known, and no reproduction has been found.

Making of the Work

The sittings can be followed almost day by day. She begins "sur un fond de draperie de satin bleu ciel. C'est tout ébauché et je suis vraiment contente de moi et de mon modèle car il pose très bien" (23 May, 061.0040). By 26 May Collignon has posed four times, "six à sept heures peut-être", and the portrait is "ma seule occupation ici, avec les livres" (061.0176). On 29 May it "a mangé trois heures" (062.0003); on 31 May Dina and her father watch a sitting (062.0057); the hand is painted at the seventh sitting on 4 June (062.0163); on 12 June she finishes the hair at the ninth (062.0329) -- "c'est la première fois que je fais une telle masse de cheveux ... toutes les mèches dorées étaient dessus de sorte que la teinte générale est splendide, chaude, dorée". On 20 June she writes "J'ai fini le portrait de Collignon" (062.0503), during a last sitting interrupted by the family's arrival.

A visitor, "la Daniloff", who had sat to Bryullov and Horace Vernet, praised it (7 June, 062.0292): Collignon's is "une figure extrêmement difficile à faire" and she had come through "très honorablement et magnifiquement". Marie's own description of the sitter, in the same paragraph, is the only description of the face the project has: pale-pink, wide, a big nose, grey-green-white eyes, red lids, few eyebrows, "une vilaine peau avec d'immenses pores" yet "une figure très agréable", and hair "longs et épais comme une forêt" in all shades from black to very fair.

Identification with later catalogues

The 1885 memorial catalogue has a Portrait de Mlle C. (no. 75, 0.50 x 0.42 m). It could be this picture, but nothing in the diary or the catalogue says so, and the match is not made here. The painting is not listed among the surviving works in the project's works catalogue; if it was one of the sixty-five Kharkiv canvases, the Lost Art records are indexed only under her name (see Kharkiv Lost Works).

References in Diary

Related Entries

Sources