269 - Charlotte Saint-Gervais de La Salle (c. 1860 – 1937)

Charlotte Saint-Gervais de La Salle (c. 1860 – 1937) Portrait of a Woman Circa 1876 Bronze bust with brown patina Bears the 1876 salon label on the front of the pedestal, "No. 3594" Total height 54 cm, on a red veined marble pedestal Height 13 cm Dust, chips, and damage to one of the upper corners of the pedestal Provenance: Artist’s collection, then passed down through the family. Château in the Vendée Exhibition: Paris, Palais des Champs-Elysées, 1876, work exhibited under the title “Négresse” and number 3594 Bibliography: -Explanation of the works of painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and lithography by living artists exhibited at the Palais des Champs-Elysées on May 1, 1876, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1876, Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts. Directorate of Fine Arts. Salon of 1876. 93rd official exhibition since the year 1673. Related literature: -La Gazette de France, June 5, 1890, pp. 2–4: statue of Vespera; -Édouard Lepage, A Page from the History of Art in the 19th Century. A Feminist Conquest: Mme Léon Bertaux, Paris, Imprimerie française J. Dangon, 1911; -Anne Rivière, Sculpture’Elles. Women Sculptors from the 18th Century to the Present, Paris, Somogy, 2011; -Anne Dufour, The Black Model, from Géricault to Matisse, Paris, Co-published by Flammarion / Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie; 2019; -Sophie Jacques, The Sculptures of Hélène Bertaux (1825–1909) and the Academic Tradition. Analysis of Three Nudes, Quebec City, Laval University, 2015; -Christelle Lozère, “Image of the ‘Other.’ Representations of Africans and West Indians in Europe (18th–20th Centuries),” Anneaux de la mémoire, 2023; It was under the official title “Negress” that this resolutely modern bust was exhibited for the first time at the 1876 Salon. Hard to accept at the dawn of the 21st century, this title given to the portrait of a young African woman with a defiant gaze and a mocking smile, dressed with quintessential Parisian elegance, must nevertheless be placed within the post-abolitionist political and historical context of the Third Republic, where racism and derogatory representations unfortunately remained widespread. Created by Charlotte de Saint-Gervais, who would become the Countess de La Salle after her marriage to Georges Seguin de La Salle in 1881, this bust marks the debut at the official Salon of a young sculptor of aristocratic origin, trained in the studio of the famous Mme Léon Bertaux, a leading figure in the fight for women’s access to art education. From 1876 to 1898, Charlotte de Saint-Gervais regularly participated in the major Parisian Salons, where she primarily presented busts, thereby establishing a specialization in this conventional category of works. However, after the presentation of this first visionary work, the sculptor failed to make a breakthrough. Nevertheless, there is a mention of one of her works in 1890, accompanied by a highly condescending review: “Madame Charlotte de Saint-Gervais is a student of Mme Berteaux, who is an accomplished artist. She submitted a statue of a nude woman which she called ‘Vespera,’ no doubt to justify the feminine gender she attributed to the Evening. Mme de Saint-Gervais may be forgiven for not knowing that Vesper is neuter and cannot be feminine. I would even say that, from every point of view, one must congratulate a woman for being ignorant of this Latin, which, in its words, defies decency. (...) The movement of this figure is well understood and welcome. We shall limit ourselves to regretting a slight heaviness in the pose and a slight stiffness in the forms of this body, which, unbeknownst to the artist, corrects her ignorance of Latin by appearing a bit too much like a neuter noun. Nevertheless, this is a good start in the world of fine art, and Mme de Saint-Gervais will find encouragement in this first success. ” This shows, in this conventional context, just how revolutionary—even iconoclastic—our bust of an African woman appears, presented fourteen years earlier by a young artist who would have been barely sixteen (she was born in 1860). This bust depicts a young woman wearing a high turban whose wide bands of fabric, combined with the small ruffles framing her face, establish a subtle link between “exotic” headdress and Parisian elegance. The face, animated by a slight, wry smile and a sidelong glance tinged with mocking irony, moves beyond pure ethnographic typology to suggest a temperament—almost a character—in a register of restrained impertinence. The torso is enlivened by a scarf crossed around the neck, evoking the outdoor attire of the elegant Parisian women of the era. The bronze bust rests on a pedestal of veined reddish-brown marble: the combination of