Jean-François Raffaëlli

With Lady Abdy, London 1980

Marvin Sadik, Scarborough, Maine

Sale: Sotheby's New York, 26 October 2004, lot 134

Jean-François Raffaëlli painted The Wedding Portrait in about 1895-1900, probably as a commission to honor the engagement or marriage of the demure young lady posed in quiet expectation beside a massive bunch of marguerite daisies.

Raffaëlli was a contemporary of the Impressionists, and for a brief time in 1880 and 1881 he participated in the Impressionists' independent exhibitions in Paris. But his wide-ranging interests and his unusually warm reception from a number of the more popular critics in 1880-81 set Raffaëlli at odds with several members of the Impressionist group; and he preferred to pursue a much more individualistic path through the French art scene. Working variously as a painter, a sculptor, an illustrator, a print-maker, and even a writer, Raffaëlli achieved his first fame for his paintings of the rag-pickers, garlic sellers, and small-time politicians of Paris' more gritty suburbs. At the same time, his work as an illustrator and writer brought him into the most influential literary circles of his day, and he built a second reputation as a superb portraitist of men at work. His portraits of friends and colleagues such as Clemenceau, the literary dandy Edmond Goncourt, or the sculptors Rodin and Dantan reveal a more sophisticated side of his life.

While Raffaëlli's portraits of his male friends and prominent acquaintances were widely exhibited and well-known during his lifetime, his portraits of women were far fewer and much more intimate in their character -- perhaps half of all his portraits of girls or women depict his own daughter Germaine. It is very likely that the unidentified sitter in The Wedding Portrait is a family friend rather than a casual client. When the portrait was sold in 1980, the sitter was identified as a Mademoiselle Galop, perhaps reflecting an identification passed along by the previous owner.

This catalogue entry was written by Alexandra Murphy.

We would like to thank Galerie Brome & Lorenceau and the Comité Raffaëlli for kindly confirming the authenticity of this lot.