Paintings of Sarah Bernhardt

 

Sarah Bernhardt by Paul Merton

Sarah Bernhardt was a French actress who lived from 1844-1923.

Sarah Bernhardt in the Role of Cleopatra by Georges Clairin

She was greatly admired for her stage presence, her striking poses, and her emotional presentation.

Sarah Bernhardt by Jules Bastien-Lepage

Because of her striking appearance and theatricality, she was a favorite model of artists of the period.

Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse

Rochegrosse painted her several times in Orientalist mode.

Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Antoine Rochegrosse

In this one she reclines in a chinois interior.

Poster design by Alphonse Mucha

She chose a young Alphonse Mucha to create one of her posters, and the image was a sensation, making both of them much more famous.

Alphonse Mucha

Mucha went on to do many portrayals of her in various guises.

Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt as Roxanna by Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948) 

The playwright Edmond Rostand referred to her as "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture." 

Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Clairin

Victor Hugo said she had a "golden voice."

She's one of the first actors from the period who appeared in silent movies.

Her voice also appears fleetingly in sound recordings. It sounds strange to our ears, but in her day it brought people to tears.

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Book: Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (Yale University Press) 

Sarah Bernhardt's Leg

Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a legendary French actress of the stage and screen, famously portrayed on posters by Alphonse Mucha.

According to Mucha's son Jiří, as Sarah Bernhardt was still clinging to the pinnacle of her fame, she injured her foot on a rusty nail. For many years she tried to battle the decay of the leg, but it was no use. An amputation would necessary because it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide her infirmity.

According to Jiří Mucha's account:

"'Madame,' said Barnum on day to her, 'I will give you $50,000 for your leg if you will allow me to exhibit it in spirit.' Sarah turned the offer down, but subsequently when during her stay in New York the leg became gangrenous and surgical intervention could not be delayed any longer, she sent word to Barnum.

But the great showman was dead by then and his successors were not interested. The leg was amputated and, weighted with a heavy stone, secretly buried in the depths of the Hudson."

Image from Olga's Gallery.
From "Alphonse Maria Mucha: His Life in Art" by Jiří Mucha, p. 241.

Sarah Bernhardt's Inkwell

Sarah Bernhardt (1845-1923) was not just an actress. She was also a sculptor. In 1879 she created this bronze inkwell in the form of a self-portrait. The inkwell traveled with her on her American tour, and was shown in the lobbies of theaters where she had starring performances.

Her head is tipped forward, and she appears in chimera form as a rare and ominous mythological creature, with bat wings and griffin feet clutching the ink vessel. 

According to the Clark Art Institute, which acquired the piece in 2020, "As one of the first celebrities in the age of photography, she was no stranger to having her likeness reproduced, which gave her a deep understanding of the power of public image as a tool for self-promotion and creative expression."

Previous posts about Sarah Bernhardt

Alphonse Mucha Exhibition in Upstate New York

Superstar actress Sarah Bernhardt desperately needed a poster for her play Gismonda.

But the three top poster artists were on vacation. So she turned to a little-known Bohemian artist named Alphonse Mucha.

The rush order came on Christmas Day. The final was due January 1.

Mucha delivered on time. His poster was narrow and tall—7 feet tall—not the square format others used. It was full of detail, with many layers of muted colors. Each color had to be separately drawn on huge stone lithographic plates.

Mucha's poster was displayed throughout the streets of Paris in January of 1895. The "street galleries" generated as much passionate art talk as did the oil paintings in the Salon.

His design looked nothing like the ones by Toulouse Lautrec or Jules Chéret or any of the other poster specialists in Paris. Everyone was enraptured by his distinctive brand of confident femininity, ornate botanical detail, and extravagant pattern.

The Gismonda poster so enchanted Bernhardt that she signed him to a multi-year contract. After years of relative obscurity, he was the toast of artistic Paris, an overnight success.

This photo wasn't taken at the Hyde Collection,
but it's from the same show in another location.

The Gismonda poster was the first thing to greet us as we entered the exhibition ALPHONSE MUCHA: MASTER OF ART NOUVEAU, Selections from the Dhawan Collection, which opened last weekend at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York.


Mucha unleashed a torrent of creativity. He contributed designs not only to posters, but also to menus, books, calendars, furniture, jewelry, cigarette advertisements, and chocolate boxes. He said, “I prefer to be someone who makes pictures for people, rather than who creates art for art’s sake.”

People called it 'Le Style Mucha' or 'Art Nouveau.' But Mucha preferred not to be labeled. He just believed that artistry belonged to everyone and that artistry should be lavished on every aspect of life.

He was so much in demand that he couldn't fill all his orders. So he produced an Art Nouveau Stylebook, with sample designs for various settings, encouraging others to absorb the ideas and adapt them to their needs.

The exhibition includes 63 major works plus books and ephemera, 75 works in all. There are a few original drawings and paintings, but the glory of the show is the selection of original color lithographs, which need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. The lithos are huge and subtle, far more impressive in person than they appear in books.

Some of the lithos are more soft and painterly than I expected, and they reward close examination. These works demonstrate the academic foundation to his skills. Mucha studied at the Munich Academy, and then at Academie Julien with Boulanger and Lefebvre, continuing at the Academie Colarossi, and finally under Jean-Paul Laurens (source).

The exhibit has a whole room of Mucha's later work leading up to the Slav Epics, including an original ink drawing that shows how he used stippling and hatching. His later work is exotic and expressive, infused with mysterious Masonic symbolism and a passion for Czech nationalism.

The show is curated by Gabriel Weisberg of the University of Minnesota, an expert on academic painting. Even if you can't make it to the show, there's an illustrated museum publication in PDF form that you can download here for free.

To celebrate its Mucha exhibition, the Museum will be hosting costume events, musical concerts, and free educational experiences for school-age children. As Interim Director Anne Saile told us, "The Museum is more than just the artwork on the walls."

Museum information.
The Hyde Collection is located in Glens Falls, just off the New York I-87 Northway, about four hours north of New York City or three hours south of Montréal. The show will continue in Glens Falls through March 18. It continues to Texas A&M in September.

Five best books on Mucha
Alphonse Mucha: Masterworks Emphasizes his posters and decorative work with large color reproductions.
Alphonse Mucha pub. by Prestel Oversize, 354 pages, with his photo reference in back, good selection of drawings and Slav Epics.
Alphonse Maria Mucha Text by Mucha's son Jirí Mucha gives extensive insight into Mucha's life and work.
Mucha: The Triumph of Art Nouveau Contains many prints, jewelry, drawings, and photos not included in other books.
Art Nouveau Stylebook, also called Documents Decoratifs, this is a Dover reproduction of Mucha's influential style book.

Previous posts
Mucha's Le Pater
Sarah Bernhardt's Leg
Mucha's Hearst Magazine Covers
Scaling Up with a Grid

The Dandy: Count Robert de Montesquiou

Count Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) was a French aesthete, poet, and art collector. 

He was spiffy dresser. At a concert of music by von Weber, he showed up with a mauve suit and a cluster of pale violets held at his neck in place of a necktie, saying, "One should always listen to von Weber in mauve.”

Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Robert de Montesquiou

He was at the center of a group of artists and actors that included  Sarah Bernhardt, Gustave Moreau, Gabriel Fauré and James McNeill Whistler. 

Montesquiou as caricatured by Sem aka Georges Goursat

If you wanted to be successful in the art world of Paris in the 1890s, you had to know him. If he didn't like you or your art, he could destroy your reputation.

Carolus-Duran, Portrait of de Montesquiou as a traveler

According to Cornelia Otis Skinner on Dandyism.net, he "had a constantly shifting set of mannerisms. At the beginning of any conversation, he’d remove one glove and start a series of gesticulations, now raising his hands towards the sky, now lowering them to touch the tip of one perfectly shod toe, now waving them as though conducting an orchestra. His conversation was hardly conversation at all but long monologues filled with exotic anecdotes, mysterious allusions and obscure classical quotations, all told with a rich vocabulary 'at the end of which,' according to Léon Daudet, 'the count would burst into the shrill laughter of an hysterical woman, then suddenly, as though seized with remorse, he’d clap his hand over his mouth and bark until his inexplicable glee was controlled… as though he were coming out of laughing gas.'"

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Page on Robert de Montesquiou on Dandyism website

Other portraits, and Why isn't there a Sargent portrait of him? Thoughts at at JSS.Gallery.com

Count Robert de Montesquiou on Wikipedia

Book: Prince of Aesthetes: Count Robert de Montesquiou, 1855-1921

Louise Abbéma

Louise Abbéma (1853-1927) was a French painter who specialized in flowers and portraits, particularly of women.

She studied with  Charles Joshua Chaplin, Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran, and one of her early successes was a portrait of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, who remained a close friend for life.

According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, "Her high-society portraits executed with a light touch and rapid brushstrokes reveal the academic and Impressionist influences that shaped her style. Her sitters included French diplomats and other notable members of society. Abbéma developed a variety of techniques using oil paints, pastel, and watercolor, and worked on various supports, including fans."

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Louise Abbéma on Wikipedia