Madeleine Lemaire 1845-1928 Portrait Of A Young Woman Watercolor

Madeleine Lemaire 1845-1928
Portrait of a young woman
Watercolor
Signed lower left
Framed dimensions: 48 x 40 cm

She was a student of Jeanne-Mathilde Herbelin (1820-1904) and Charles Chaplin (1825-1891). She specialized in genre scenes (sometimes in the 18th century style) and social scenes, and especially in still lifes and flowers. She made her debut at the Salon of 1864, where she exhibited throughout her life, receiving prizes in 1877 and 1900. She also exhibited at the Salon of the Society of French Watercolourists from 1879. Madeleine Lemaire also illustrated books, such as Les Plaisirs et les Jours by Marcel Proust, or L'Abbé Constantin by Ludovic Halévy, or the poems of Robert de Montesquiou. Every Tuesday, from April to June, Madeleine Lemaire received all of Paris in her Parisian mansion at 31, rue de Monceau, in what André Germain called "hot killings." Her garden was planted with lilacs. She received the aristocracy of the Faubourg Saint-Germain (the La Rochefoucaulds, Luynes, Uzès, Haussonvilles, Chevignés, Greffulhes, the Countess of Pourtalès, Boni de Castellane, the Marquise de Casa Fuerte7, the Duchess Grazioli, the Brissacs, etc.) as well as young artists and celebrities from the stage or politics. Like Mme Verdurin, for whom she was one of the models, she had definitive decisions like: "I don't want that in my house!" Her studio, transformed into a salon, welcomed personalities as diverse as young talents that she launched such as Marcel Proust - who was invited from 1892 and described his salon for the readers of Le Figaro - and Reynaldo Hahn or artists at the height of their glory, such as Victorien Sardou, Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, Mounet-Sully, Sarah Bernhardt or François Coppée.