Description
Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL ( 1881-1949) Portrait of Consuela "Consie" Vanderbilt, 1936 Oil on canvas, 40 x 25 cm monogrammed in the upper right corner: "BBM Provenance: Private collection. A certificate from Mr Stéphane-Jacques ADDADE, Member of the European Chamber of Art Experts, will be given to the buyer. In December 1935, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr (1878-1944), a shipbuilding and railroad magnate nicknamed "The Commodore" as his great-grandfather had been, commissioned Bernard Boutet de Monvel to paint his portrait. To paint it, the artist went to Miami, Alva Base, a vast property on Terminal Fisher Island where the Alva, a 264-foot yacht named by the commodore after his mother and inaugurated in 1931, was moored. Her front portrait features William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. in front of his yacht, while his profile portrait, painted at the same time by Bernard Boutet de Monvel in preparation for the "Profiles" exhibition, shows him in front of the Spanish Revival mansion that architect Maurice Fatio (1897 - 1943) had just built on the property. It is this same Alva Base mansion that is the backdrop for the portrait of the Commodore's second daughter, Consuelo "Consie" Vanderbilt (1903-2011), who had just been divorced from Mr. Earl E. T. Smith and returned to live with her father. Aged about 33, the model poses in profile, as if to emphasize her amazing resemblance to that other Consuelo, her aunt, Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan (1877-1964), the famous Duchess of Malbourough so admired and portrayed a few years earlier by John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini or Paul César Helleu. "Consie" Vanderbilt is wearing a scarf with large red and white stripes tied in a kerchief. This fashionable scarf, which is reminiscent of the one worn by Miss Jacqueline Delubac for the dinner scene in Sacha Guitry's film Désiré (1937), is the main subject of the painting. It offers Bernard Boutet de Monvel the pleasure, while departing from a conventional palette, to demonstrate his stunning virtuosity in the treatment of the folds of silk, their volume, the deformation of its stripes, as well as in the play of light on its material. A few weeks later, the model would meet her painter in his New York studio to discover the portrait of her father and commission him to paint the portrait of her daughter, before changing her mind, claiming that she "could not afford" such an expense; an excuse that would provoke Bernard Boutet de Monvel to make this amused comment: "It completes my collection of starving millionaires with Mrs Rockefeller! "
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Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL ( 1881-1949) Portrait of Consuela "Consie" Vanderbilt, 1936 Oil on canvas, 40 x 25 cm monogrammed in the upper right corner: "BBM Provenance: Private collection. A certificate from Mr Stéphane-Jacques ADDADE, Member of the European Chamber of Art Experts, will be given to the buyer. In December 1935, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr (1878-1944), a shipbuilding and railroad magnate nicknamed "The Commodore" as his great-grandfather had been, commissioned Bernard Boutet de Monvel to paint his portrait. To paint it, the artist went to Miami, Alva Base, a vast property on Terminal Fisher Island where the Alva, a 264-foot yacht named by the commodore after his mother and inaugurated in 1931, was moored. Her front portrait features William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. in front of his yacht, while his profile portrait, painted at the same time by Bernard Boutet de Monvel in preparation for the "Profiles" exhibition, shows him in front of the Spanish Revival mansion that architect Maurice Fatio (1897 - 1943) had just built on the property. It is this same Alva Base mansion that is the backdrop for the portrait of the Commodore's second daughter, Consuelo "Consie" Vanderbilt (1903-2011), who had just been divorced from Mr. Earl E. T. Smith and returned to live with her father. Aged about 33, the model poses in profile, as if to emphasize her amazing resemblance to that other Consuelo, her aunt, Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan (1877-1964), the famous Duchess of Malbourough so admired and portrayed a few years earlier by John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini or Paul César Helleu. "Consie" Vanderbilt is wearing a scarf with large red and white stripes tied in a kerchief. This fashionable scarf, which is reminiscent of the one worn by Miss Jacqueline Delubac for the dinner scene in Sacha Guitry's film Désiré (1937), is the main subject of the painting. It offers Bernard Boutet de Monvel the pleasure, while departing from a conventional palette, to demonstrate his stunning virtuosity in the treatment of the folds of silk, their volume, the deformation of its stripes, as well as in the play of light on its material. A few weeks later, the model would meet her painter in his New York studio to discover the portrait of her father and commission him to paint the portrait of her daughter, before changing her mind, claiming that she "could not afford" such an expense; an excuse that would provoke Bernard Boutet de Monvel to make this amused comment: "It completes my collection of starving millionaires with Mrs Rockefeller! "
