Portrait de grand-maman (1877)

Overview

The Portrait de grand-maman is a portrait of Marie's grandmother, started on 31 May 1877 at Nice "d'après un pastel plus petit que nature", enlarged by her, and finished on 10 June 1877 after six days of work. It belongs to the spring of 1877, four months before she entered the Académie Julian. The picture is not described beyond its size and its origin, and no reproduction is known.

Marie and this work

31 May 1877 (071.0507): "j'ai commencé le portrait de grand-maman d'après un pastel plus petit que nature, j'agrandirai et je continue le mien qui s'améliore peu à peu." On 5 June (071.0570): "Le portrait de grand-maman va se reposer pendant un ou deux jours et nous ferons le pendant au prince." (Who "le prince" is, and whether the companion was made, the diary does not say in these paragraphs.) On 10 June (071.0618): "Le portrait de grand-maman est fini, j'y ai mis six jours, puisqu'Alexandre en a pris quatre sur les dix. J'espère bien qu'on me donnera quelque chose, grand-papa donnera car je vous assure qu'on me le payerait cent francs dans une boutique, partout enfin." So she hoped for a payment from her grandfather and thought a shop would have paid a hundred francs.

Whose portrait?

Marie's mother's mother, the family's "grand-maman", died suddenly in 1870 (see Grand-maman). A portrait in 1877 "d'après un pastel plus petit que nature" is therefore almost certainly posthumous, enlarged from an earlier small pastel portrait. The paragraphs do not say so, and the sitter is not named beyond "grand-maman"; it is an inference. "Alexandre", who "took four days of the ten", is not explained either (his own picture, a group of two heads joined by a cord, is described at 071.0615).

References in Diary

Related Entries

Sources