Tamara de Lempicka

Galerie du Luxembourg, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Galerie Wolf Uecker, Hamburg

Private Collection, Hamburg

Galerie Michael Hasenclever, Munich (1988)

Barry Friedman Gallery, New York (1988-89)

Acquired from the above

Poznan, Poland, Exposition Internationale des Beaux-Arts, 1929, no. 1236

Paris, Galerie du Luxembourg, Tamara de Lempicka de 1925 à 1935, 1972, no. 26

Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte, Tamara de Lempicka, 1989

Rome, Accademia di Francia Villa Medici, Tamara de Lempicka, Tra eleganza e trasgressione, 1994, no. 30

Montreal, Musée des Beaux Arts, Tamara de Lempicka, 1994

Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Der Kuhle Blick: Realismus der zwanziger jhare, 2001

Tamara de Lempicka, Album-photos annoté, Houston, 1923, no. 77

Marc Vaux, Fonds Lempicka, M.N.A.M., Paris, 1972, no. 77

Ellen Thormann, Tamara de Lempicka, Kunstkritik und Künstlerinnen in Paris, Berlin, 1993, listed p. 221, no. 55

Gioia Mori, Tamara de Lempicka, Parigi 1920-1938, Florence, 1994, no. 61, illustrated p. 160

Alain Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka, Catalogue Raisonné 1921-1979, Lausanne, 1999, no. B.100, illustrated p. 179

Around the time Lempicka completed the present work in 1928, she had begun to achieve widespread acclaim as a portraitist. The significance of her work is explained by Alain Blondel: "In the iconographic reserves of contemporary history, Tamara de Lempicka gradually emerges as the portraitist who best represented the high society of the twenties and thirties. Through her portraits of her contemporaries - selected by a brilliant circle of friends, composed of European aristocrats and affluent patrons enthused by modernism - she left us a personalized chronicle of her times" (Alain Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka, Catalogue Raisonné 1921-1979, Lausanne, 1999, p. 16). Romana de La Salle was the daughter of Lempicka’s close friend, the Duchesse de La Salle, whose well-known portrait hung in Lempicka’s bedroom on the rue Guy de Maupassant (see fig. 1). Born in Athens in 1887, the Duchess acquired her name through marriage to the Duke de La Salle de Rochemaure. The two eventually divorced, but the Duchess retained her title and collected a considerable alimony until the 1930s, when she and her daughter retired to a small Alpine village for the rest of her life.

Lempicka had been introduced to Renaissance painting in 1911, when she accompanied her grandmother on a trip to Italy. In 1925 she returned there, and in Florence she spent hours copying the work of the Mannerists. This influence inspired Lempicka to develop her unique artistic style, in which she incorporated the careful modeling found in late Renaissance art with the more geometric elements of modern design. In the present work, for example, the curvaceous lines of the sitter’s dress and figure contrast with the silhouettes of skyscrapers in the background, evoking both the romantic ideals and urban development that came to define modern life in European cities. As noted by the artist’s daughter, "What she painted had a smooth polish, an icy perfection that detached her subjects from reality, that made them archetypal…Beneath the paintings’ satin and porcelain surfaces, beneath the icing, passion smoldered, hinted at by the fullness of her volumes, by the violent outbursts of reds, blues, greens" (Baroness Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall, Passion by Design, The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka, New York, 1987, p. 84).

In Portrait de Romana de La Salle, the sitter's cropped hair, red lips and painted fingernails are strikingly modern. Nonetheless, the influence of Renaissance painting on Lempicka's work is evident throughout the composition. The illumination of Romana's face draws attention to her wistful gaze, which defies the severe, monolithic forms of the skyscrapers behind her. The slight tilt of her head and the gentle turn of her torso recall the figures of Pontormo and Botticelli (see fig. 1), and the dramatic shadows employed throughout the present work allude to Lempicka's admiration for the Mannerist painters. Meanwhile, the ethereal quality of Romana’s pink dress is anchored by her grand proportions, which fill the bottom of the picture plane and culminate in the delicate features of her face at the top of the canvas, forming a triangular symmetry. The juxtaposition of sensuous contours with rhythmic geometry in this composition results in a commanding yet sensitive portrait.

Comparables:

Fig. 1, Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait de la Duchesse de La Salle, 1925, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Fig. 2, Jacopo Pontormo, Annunziazione, 1527-28, fresco, Capponi Chapel, Florence