Johann Frank KIRCHBACH London, 1859 - Schliersee, 1912 Portrait of Countess Alice Kessler in an Interior Oil on canvas (Original canvas) Signed and dated 'F. Kirchbach 84' lower right Canvas from Calteaux-Bargue (Small dents and missing parts, especially lower left) Portrait of the countess Kessler in an interior, oil on canvas, signed and dated, by J.-F. Kirchbach 182 x 150.50 cm (71.65 x 59.25 in.) Provenance: By family tradition, given by the sitter to his grandson Jacques de Brion; then by descent; Private collection, Dordogne Comment: Countess Alice Kessler was considered one of the most seductive women of her time, with her red hair and bewitching air. She even boasted of her own beauty to Jean-Jacques Henner, who painted her portrait a few years after ours (fig.1): "You'll have an admirable head of hair to paint" she wrote to convince him to paint her portrait. Our majestic painting, by German painter Johann Frank Kirchbach, attests to the beauty of the model as much as it reveals the atypical personality of the wife of a wealthy German banker living in Paris. A lover of letters and the arts, she rubbed shoulders with Parisian social and artistic high society of the time, writing short novels and even giving small private performances in her private hotel.