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
Expand Figure 1 Charles 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. ↩︎