Communication with the purpose of culturally promoting artists included in the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Collection, works protected by intellectual property rights. Their total or partial reproduction or processing by any means, or their transmission or cession in any form is forbidden without the authorisation of the holder of the rights to the works.
LAURE HAYMAN
TECHNICAL DATA
Author: Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta (Rome, 1841 – Versalles, France, 1920)
Title: Laure Hayman
Year: Circa 1880-85
Technique: oil on canvas
Size: 180,5 x 75 cm
This portrait is the most outstanding of those of Laure Hayman (1851-1932), a lady of captivating personality. Of Anglo-Chilean origin, Laure lived in Paris, where she was the mistress of aristocrats, muse of Marcel Proust and Paul Bourget and, in her maturity, a remarkable sculptor. She was, in fact, one of the models of Odette de Crécy, the lover and later wife of Charles Swann, one of the protagonists of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and also of Gladys Harvey, the protagonist of Paul Bourget’s homonymous nouvelle, the first of the ten portraits of women that made up his book Pastels (1889).
Raimundo de Madrazo immortalized her with the sad and dreamy expression that was characteristic of her, in a work of very casual execution that stands out from other portraits painted in this period of the artist’s plenitude.
The painting was acquired at the Parisian house Artcurial on November 18, 2020 (lot 163). The Foundation, which has among its founding objectives the recovery, conservation and dissemination of heritage, has restored the work after its acquisition, in an intervention that has allowed to recover the purity of the colors, the tactile qualities and the extraordinary workmanship of the portrait and the quality of the gilding and decorative play and brightness of the frame.