140. Charles Milcendeau, Portrait of a Young Woman

ArtistCharles Milcendeau, French, Soullans, Vendée 1872–Soullans, Vendée 1919
Title, DatePortrait of a Young Woman (Portrait de jeune femme), 1915
MediumPen highlighted with gouache
Dimensions4 × 3 1/2 in. (10.2 × 8.9 cm)
Inscriptions + MarksLower right: Charles / Milcendeau / 15
ProvenanceArmand Fourreau, until 1920; [Galerie Jacques Fischer, Paris, until 2003; to Weisberg]; Yvonne and Gabriel Weisberg, Minneapolis
Exhibition History"Reflections on Reality: Drawings and Paintings from the Weisberg Collection," Mia, 2022–23
ReferencesJean-Gabriel Lemoine, "Charles Milcendeau à l’exposition des peintres d’Armor," "L’Art et les Artistes," vol. 1, nos. 1–9 (1920), pp. 77–79, ill.
Credit LinePromised gift of Gabriel P. and Yvonne M.L. Weisberg, Minneapolis
Figure 1Charles Milcendeau, Young Woman, 1915, watercolor, sale, Thierry-Lannon, Brest, July 4, 2020, no. 305.

This sensitive, gemlike drawing is one of at least two small-scale studies Charles Milcendeau made of the sitter. Here, she is portrayed rather austerely, in a black dotted dress and with shelves in the background. In the other study, a more broadly executed watercolor (fig. 1), she leans into the frame with her hand raised to her chest amid a more decorated backdrop. Could each of these be a tête d’étude, or head study, that an artist would keep on hand and use when a live model was not available? This was a common studio practice of the period.1 Indeed, Milcendeau went on to paint larger pictures of this as-yet-unidentified sitter as well.2

Armand Fourreau, who at one point owned this drawing, was a close friend of the artist.3 Fourreau had been a student at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) and evidently had also written a book on Milcendeau, which, according to Milcendeau biographer Christophe Vital, cannot be found. Fourreau wrote other books about art: Le génie gothique: La tradition dans l’école française (1910), Berthe Morisot (1925), and Les Clouet (1929). Milcendeau is often thought of as a descendant of Les Clouet—the court painters Jean Clouet and his son, François, active in the sixteenth century; the filiation was observed by the art critic Roger Marx in the text for Milcendeau’s first exhibition, held at Durand-Ruel, Paris, in 1898.

GPW

Notes

  1. For another example, see Head Study: Portrait of a Young Woman by Virginie Demont-Breton (cat. no. 68). ↩︎

  2. For an example, see Exposition rétrospective Charles Milcendeau 1872–1919: Peintures, dessins, gouaches, pastels, aquarelles, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, February 13–28, 1928, no. 44, Jeune vendéenne. It is dated 1915, just like the present drawing. Another painting, also from 1915, is privately held. ↩︎

  3. Milcendeau painted a portrait of Fourreau with his dog in 1914 (oil on canvas, 32 x 26 cm, private collection), inscribing it, “A mon cher ami Armand Fourreau ∣ Ch. Milcendeau.” See Christophe Vital, ed., Charles Milcendeau 1872–1919: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2012), p. 151, no. 70, ill. ↩︎