Portrait of the Comtesse Potocka by Maria Prévot — April 2023

The Portrait of the Comtesse Potocka, painted by Maria Prévot in 1885, entered the collections of the Musée Marcel Proust at the end of 2022. The first work to stand at the crossroads of two themes already represented in the collection — portraits of the writer's family on the one hand, and photographs of his aristocratic circle on the other — this canvas now holds a singular place: it is the first to show, on canvas, a great society figure whom Proust himself knew and celebrated.

Comtesse Emmanuella Potocka, née Pignatelli (1852–1930), is among the muses to whom Proust devoted an article, published under a pseudonym in Le Figaro of 13 May 1904, before the great descriptive passages of À la recherche du temps perdu raised such figures to the rank of literary characters. This brochure brings together three texts that shed light, in turn, on the personality of the comtesse, the art of the mysterious Maria Prévot, and the prose of the young Proust as a society columnist.

Overview

An unfinished oil on canvas dated 1885, the Portrait of the Comtesse Potocka depicts its sitter in half-length against a broadly brushed grey background, in a harmony of greys and blacks. Through the broad lines of the face — the pale oval, the large melancholy eyes, the black hair carefully pinned up — and the nuances of a mantilla tied at the neck with a large black bow, Maria Prévot captures the character and elegance of her sitter in the tradition of the "têtes d'expression," a genre in vogue during the Belle Époque.

Emmanuella Pignatelli, wife of Comte Nicolas Potocki, was one of the reigning figures of fashionable Parisian society at the end of the nineteenth century. Her salon attracted Maupassant, Bourget, Montesquiou, Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn. Proust called on her and visited her on several occasions, first on the rue Chateaubriand and then on the rue Théophile-Gautier. In 1904, Proust published in Le Figaro of 13 May, under the pseudonym "Horatio," an article entitled "Le Salon de la comtesse Potocka," blending irony and admiration.

Authors and Contributors

Jérôme Bastianelli, president of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, writes the introduction and retraces the circumstances of the painting's acquisition.

Jean-Yves Tadié, vice-president of the Société, devotes his essay to the person of the Comtesse Potocka, to her place in fashionable society at the end of the nineteenth century, and to her relations with Marcel Proust.

Oriane Beaufils sketches a portrait of Maria Prévot, an artist from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, a pupil of Carolus-Duran and Jean-Jacques Henner, and situates the painting within the stylistic tradition of the "têtes d'expression."

Marcel Proust is represented by the reprint of the article "Le Salon de la comtesse Potocka," published under the pseudonym "Horatio" in Le Figaro of 13 May 1904.

Éric Unger oversaw the editorial direction of the brochure.

Contents

• Introduction, by Jérôme Bastianelli
• La Comtesse Potocka, or "the White Beauty," by Jean-Yves Tadié
• Maria Prévot — Portrait of the Comtesse Potocka, by Oriane Beaufils
• Le Salon de la comtesse Potocka, by Marcel Proust (Le Figaro, 13 May 1904)

Bibliographic Information

• Format: paperback
• ISBN: 978-2-492318-20-7
• Price: 5 €
• Publisher: Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray
• Legal deposit: April 2023