Portrait de la comtesse Dina de Toulouse-Lautrec (pastel)

Overview

Portrait de la comtesse Dina de Toulouse-Lautrec (pastel on paper, 61 × 50 cm) is Marie's most celebrated work in pastel and hangs today in the Musée d'Orsay, inv. RF 39091. The sitter is her cousin Dina Babanina, later Comtesse de Toulouse-Lautrec, who was also her most frequent and most reluctant model.

It was shown at the *Salon of 1883 as no. 106, under the title Portrait de Mlle de B. — and it is this pastel, not either of the two paintings she sent the same year, that carried the mention honorable*** the jury awarded her. That distinction mattered enormously to her, and getting it for the wrong work wounded her (see below). The prize is commonly and wrongly attached to the Salon of 1884.

A dating caveat. The museum and the 1885 posthumous catalogue place the work in 1883, which is the Salon year. The diary makes clear the pastel was made in the spring of 1882: on 26 March 1884 Marie writes of "le pastel fait il y a près de deux ans" (¶ 103.0569), and Julian is already praising "le pastel de Dina" in April 1882 (¶ 090.0518). "1883" is the exhibition date, not the date of execution.

Description

Pastel on paper, 61 × 50 cm. Marie leaves no set-piece description of it in the diary comparable to the one she wrote for her Salon debut — what the diary records instead is the reaction of everyone who saw it. The picture entered the French national collections by way of the Jeu de Paume in 1930, passed to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, then to the Louvre in 1977, and finally to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.

Image gap. The only reproduction on Wikimedia Commons is 497 × 600 px, too small to publish here at a size that would do the work justice. This entry therefore carries no illustration. The Musée d'Orsay's own object page is the best place to see it.

Making of the Work

Marie had been painting Dina since 1879 — a profile in oil begun that July, shown to Julian and to Tony Robert-Fleury, and retouched over four weeks (¶¶ 085.0321, 085.0339, 085.0364, 085.0419). The great pastel belongs to the Nice and Paris campaign of spring 1882. When Julian reviewed the Nice output on 25 April 1882, his verdict on it was unqualified — "Le pastel de Dina très, très bien" (¶ 090.0518) — even as he demolished the rest of that week's painting (¶ 094.0266). Tony agreed (¶ 095.0143), Julian repeated himself on 29 May (¶ 095.0116), and on 10 June Mmes de Lambertye and Gautreau and the painter Louise Abbéma came to see it (¶ 095.0158).

By December 1882 the pastel had become her hope for the coming season: "Mon pastel ira dans un Cercle puis au Salon, 'c'est une chose de première ordre' dit le père Julian et j'ai envie de lui sauter au cou" (¶ 097.0206). The Cercle exhibition never happened — Julian had promised to place the pastel and one painting and did nothing, which produced the sharpest rupture between them in the whole diary, complete with a sarcastic thank-you note she copies out in full (¶¶ 098.0356–098.0363).

At the Salon it did better than anything else she sent. Only two pastels were received with a number 1 — "Le mien et celui de Breslau" (¶ 099.0175) — and Cabanel and Franceschi were talking of a medal "pour le pastel". Marie's reply is the whole of her ambition in one line: "J'aimerais mieux une petite mention mais pour la peinture…" (¶ 099.0037). On 23 May 1883 she ran through the Salon looking for the award label on her Irma, did not find it, and found it instead "jusqu'à l'odieux pastel" (¶ 099.0393). The distinction she wanted for her painting had gone to the pastel, and she never quite forgave it: a year later she is still asking "pourquoi n'ai-je pas encore donné en peinture l'équivalent du pastel fait il y a près de deux ans !" (¶ 103.0569).

A second, later Dina portrait exists and should not be confused with this one. In November 1883 Marie began another pastel of her cousin — "une harmonie blanche, c'est superbe" (¶ 102.0059) — planned for a winter exhibition (¶ 101.0542), sent to the Femmes Peintres in March 1884 (¶ 103.0412), and which the collector Hayem tried to buy in May 1884; she refused (¶ 104.0172).

References in Diary

- Antecedents, the 1879 oil portrait of Dina: 1879-07-02, ¶ 085.0321 · 1879-07-05, ¶ 085.0339 · 1879-07-13, ¶ 085.0364 · 1879-07-27, ¶ 085.0419
- First mention of the pastel — 1882-04-25, ¶ 090.0518: "Le pastel de Dina très, très bien."
- 1882-04-27, ¶ 094.0266 · 1882-05-29, ¶ 095.0116 · 1882-06-08, ¶ 095.0143 · 1882-06-10, ¶ 095.0158 — the run of praise
- 1882-08-19, ¶ 096.0105 — a further Dina portrait planned, "avec une pointe de mystère, d'inconnu dans ses yeux de chat"
- 1882-12-07, ¶ 097.0206 — the plan: a Cercle, then the Salon
- 1883-02-19, ¶¶ 098.0356–098.0363 — the rupture with Julian over the Cercle that never happened
- 1883-03-25, ¶¶ 098.0570, 098.0572 — waiting on the jury
- 1883-04-04, ¶ 099.0037 · 1883-04-22, ¶ 099.0175 — talk of a medal; received with a number 1
- 1883-05-23, ¶ 099.0393 — she finds the award label on the pastel instead of on her painting
- 1884-03-26, ¶ 103.0569 — still measuring her painting against it two years on
- The later "harmonie blanche" Dina pastel (a distinct work): 1883-10-09, ¶ 101.0542 · 1883-11-28, ¶ 102.0059 · 1884-03-01, ¶ 103.0412 · 1884-03-05, ¶¶ 103.0430, 103.0438 · 1884-05-14, ¶ 104.0172

Related Entries

- #Dina — the sitter
- #Question_du_divorce — the 1880 Salon debut, also with Dina as model
- #Rodolphe_Julian · #Tony_Robert_Fleury
- #La_Parisienne · #Jean_et_Jacques — the two paintings she sent to the same Salon of 1883, and which did not take the prize
- #Salon · #Medaille · #Art_practice

Sources

- Musée d'Orsay, RF 39091 — dimensions, medium, provenance
- Catalogue des œuvres de Mlle Bashkirtseff, Union des Femmes Peintres & Sculpteurs, Paris: Ludovic Baschet, 9 February 1885, no. 106 (pastel, Portrait de Mlle Dinah) — Gallica ark:/12148/bpt6k131932r
- The 1885 catalogue's notice signed "Une Amie", which places the mention honorable at the Salon of 1883 together with Jean et Jacques, La Parisienne and "un pastel" — correcting the widespread attribution to 1884
- Wikidata Q23009083
- The diary itself, carnets 085, 090, 094–099, 101–104