Purchase of a painting by Louise Abbéma

The collections of the Maison de Tante Léonie - Musée Marcel Proust have been enriched by the purchase, on Friday 16 February, at Drouot, of this painting by Louise Abbéma depicting the Comédie-Française actress Jeanne Samary.

Louise Abbéma is mentioned only once by Marcel Proust, in Une Fête littéraire à Versailles, an article published on 31 May 1894 in Le Gaulois, which describes a reception given by Robert de Montesquiou and the people Proust encountered there. But there is no doubt that the writer and the artist crossed paths on more than one occasion. Louise Abbéma, who was Sarah Bernhardt's companion, moved in the same circles as Proust; she was, for instance, close to Madeleine Lemaire. As for Jeanne Samary, she is mentioned twice in À la Recherche du temps perdu, notably, right at the start, when the Narrator recalls his passion for actresses: « how much a star's name blazing at the door of a theatre, how much, in the window of a passing brougham with roses adorning its horses' brows, the sight of a woman's face I thought might perhaps be an actress, left in me a more lasting disturbance, a powerless and painful effort to picture her life to myself. I ranked the most illustrious in order of talent, Sarah Bernhardt, la Berma, Bartet, Madeleine Brohan, Jeanne Samary, but all of them interested me. ».

This lovely painting will help illustrate Proust's fondness for great actresses. It will be exhibited at the Maison de Tante Léonie – Musée Marcel Proust as soon as it reopens, on 18 May. Its acquisition was made possible by a new grant from the Fonds du Patrimoine (Ministère de la Culture), which we warmly thank.