Subscription campaign for a painting by Thomas Alexander Harrison

The Société des Amis de Marcel Proust is running a subscription campaign to acquire a painting by Thomas Alexander Harrison entitled Beach Tides and painted around 1895, that is, at the time when Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn were visiting the painter's studio at Beg-Meil.

This work is intended to enrich the collections of the Maison de Tante Léonie – Musée Marcel Proust, collections which already contain works by artists with whom the writer was friends (Paul-César Helleu, Madeleine Lemaire, Paul Baignères).

As Jean-Yves Tadié notes: « Harrison was an inspiration to Proust, the model for Elstir. This seascape, the painter's favourite genre, one moreover little represented in French museums, depicting a Breton bay at low tide, is of a very high quality and will remind everyone at once of the life and the work of the man for whom painting mattered so much ».

This acquisition benefits from the support of the Fonds du patrimoine (Ministère de la Culture), the subscription campaign being intended to cover all or part of the balance remaining for the association to bear. Each donation will be acknowledged with a receipt allowing a tax deduction, and small rewards are also planned.

All the information is gathered on this site. As the association is recognised as being of public benefit, donations are deductible from income tax, up to 66%.

The painting will be unveiled on 10 July, in Illiers-Combray, the day of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust.

Thank you to all those who are able to support us or help spread the word about this exceptional campaign.

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Who was Thomas Alexander Harrison (1853-1930)?

An American painter born in Philadelphia in 1853, who moved to France from 1879 onwards, Alexander Harrison briefly attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before accepting a position as a coastal surveyor for the United States government, which awakened his interest in the seascapes that would make him famous. A pupil of Gérôme and Bastien-Lepage in Paris, he made frequent stays in Brittany at the end of the 19th century. Several of his paintings are exhibited in French museums – including "La Solitude" at the Musée d'Orsay.

What is his connection with Proust?

In September 1895, Proust and Reynaldo Hahn met Alexander Harrison at Beg-Meil, where he was then living. He introduced them to Penmarc'h and the Pointe du Raz. Having lent his features to the writer C. in Jean Santeuil, Harrison would become the first model for the painter Elstir, nothing else explaining the appearance, in parentheses, of his name in an August 1903 letter to Georges de Lauris and in the Carnet de 1908, followed by the remark of the fictional painter about his painting "the harbour of Carquethuit" in la Recherche: "Carquethuit is quite another thing, with its rocks on a low beach. I know nothing like it in France; it reminds me rather of certain aspects of Florida." Proust, Reynaldo Hahn and his cousin Marie Nordlinger would visit Alexander Harrison in his Paris studio on the rue Campagne Première in July 1897.

Why this painting?

Entitled "Beach Tides", this seascape was painted by Alexander Harrison in Brittany at the very time when Proust, then writing Jean Santeuil, was staying there. It is possible that the writer saw it just as it is in the painter's studio, since it is for sale in its original frame. Technically, it is a perfect example of the Tonalist movement, of which Alexander's brother, Lowell Birge, was the leading figure in the United States, and to which Whistler, his contemporary, belonged for a time. This painting corresponds to Proust's descriptions of one of Elstir's "manners", when the narrator visits him at Balbec in À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.

What is its place in the museum at the Maison de Tante Léonie?

Impatient to see Les Plaisirs et les jours published at the end of 1895, illustrated by Madeleine Lemaire — of whom the Société des amis de Marcel Proust owns two drawings — Proust set about writing the novel in which the names of Illiers and Beg-Meil appear. He would later shift his memories of Brittany to Normandy in inventing Balbec, the other "way" from Combray. With the acquisition of this painting, the two works by Proust that preceded and foreshadowed À la recherche du temps perdu would be represented at Illiers, and Combray and Balbec would be brought together.