Troubetzkoy blog

Paul Troubetzkoy was often described as an Impressionist sculptor by contemporary critics. He created effects similar to what the Scapigliati painters did on canvas by interweaving between his subject and the atmosphere around it.

Troubetzkoy approached his portrait busts without using preparatory sketches of models. His working methods and aesthetic preferences produced bronze busts that showed evidence of their process of creation, with some lesser worked areas along with highly finished areas. In that sense he belongs to the Cosmopolitan Realist movement which encompassed John Singer Sargent, Giovanni Boldini and others (1).

Troubetzkoy’s sculptural vision was clearly articulated in his bust of Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s secretary wrote that the sculptor’s interest in the writer was not literary: he had never read any of his works. It was that Tolstoy had “a wonderfully sculpted head”. His modeling was guided by his imagination and his sense of form; he predicted the evolution of form in space and the way it moved. Part of this came from an understanding of nature, with the form growing from the inside, gaining strength and eventually opening up. His genius lay in his ability to grasp sketchy movements in his plasters. 

John Singer Sargent was the portrait artist who closely resembled his contemporary Troubetzkoy in his use of elongation of his subjects to depict glamour. Andy Warhol commented that Sargent “made everybody look glamorous. Taller. Thinner. But they all have mood; every one of them has a different mood.” (2)

This 1881 sketch of his friend Vernon Lee from the Tate is an example of Sargent’s impressionist style; it was done in a single sitting which lasted only three hours. The free brush work adds ambiguity to a woman who “toyed with gender and stereotypes in a patriarchal world”. (3)

Sargent was able to work for only a few minutes in early evenings when the light was exactly right. He placed his easel and paints beforehand, and posed his models in anticipation of the few moments when he could paint the mauvish light of dusk. His friend Edmund Gosse recorded Sargent’s working method: “Instantly, he took up his place at a distance from the canvas, and at a certain notation of the light ran forward over the lawn with the action of a wag-tail, planting at the same time, rapid dabs of paint on the picture, and then retiring again, only, with equal suddenness, to repeat the wag-tail action. All this occupied but two or three minutes, the light rapidly declining, and then, while he left the young ladies to remove his machinery[…]” (4)

One of Troubetzkoy’s best known works is his bust of GB Shaw was created in Sargent’s London studio. Shaw records that “he worked convulsively, giving birth to the thing in agonies, hurling lumps of clay about with groans, and making strange, dumb movements with his tongue, like a wordless prophet. He covered himself with plaster. He covered me with plaster. And, finally, he covered the block he was working on with plaster to such purpose that, at the end of the second sitting, lo! there stood Sargent’s studio in ruins, buried like Pompeii under the scoriae of a volcano, and in the midst a spirited bust of one of my reputations, a little idealized (quite the gentleman in fact) but recognisable a mile off as the sardonic author of Man and Superman […]” (5)

The label ‘Impressionism’ in sculpture came from an approximate reconstruction of the Impressionist painters’ Salons. Although the Salons were intended to be interdisciplinary, only seven works categorised as sculpture were included across all eight editions (6).

The first recorded reference to ‘impressionist sculpture’ came from the critic Jules Claretie. “Good God! We are going to see Impressionist sculptors!” he exclaimed after seeing Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen at the Impressionists’ sixth Salon des Indépendants in 1881. The work disturbed audiences with the realism of its tutu, ribbon and human hair, and Claretie saw it as a rejection of tradition, adding sarcastically that ‘they are starting to affirm their independence in the form of sculpture; colour was not enough’. This could be said to be the first Impressionist sculpture: it was a modern subject, with the artist deploying modern materials; the finish was rougher than usual; it was realistic rather than idealised in its depiction of the young dancer (7).

Degas’ impressionism style is vividly represented in his racehorses, which were experimental studies for commercial compositions. In one of these studies, the distortion of the horse’s head suggests its body flashing in and out of focus as it passes the eye.

In a context where artists explored new avenues to depict movement in sculpture, it was inevitable that Troubetzkoy was heavily influenced by Degas in his modelling of dancers, such as Countess Thamara Swirskaya in about 1909. She was then a renowned pianist and dancer who performed around the world (8).

The bravura technique which Troubetzkoy brought to bronze captures the dynamism and spirit of Thamara Swirskaya. He sought to improve the surface’s naturalism, investing his works with a unique crispness and sharpness. The Getty museum has a fine example, which reveals Troubetzkoy’s mastery of technique in the accurate but swift strokes of the modelling, showing his sensitivity to the subject.

Slowly, the boundaries between shapes start falling apart, what really matters is the eye’s impression and no longer the quality of the form.  What is perceived is the continuity of the figure in the space.

The critic Edmond Claris wrote an essay on the subject entitled De L’Impressionnisme en sculpture in 1902. After Degas, the focus shifted to the work of Medardo Rosso, Rodin and his partner Camille Claudel. For example in Claudel’s Waltz (1889–1905) we see the sweep of the female partner’s dress both anchoring and conveying motion.

By the summer of 1886 a new name was added to the Impressionist group: Italian sculptor, Medardo Rosso, who exhibited his work at the Paris Salon. In the absence of public access to Degas’s sculptures, with the exception of one work, Rosso became the Impressionist sculptor par excellence, even though he never exhibited with the Impressionists themselves. One innovation was in the use of wax as a finished medium. Wax was frequently used in the modelling and casting processes, but it had been considered too fragile to be a permanent medium. Rosso cast a coloured wax outer layer around a plaster core. He was a friend of Eugène Carrière, who worked in a tenebrist style. Carrière was later a neighbour of Bourdelle, and in regular communication with Auguste Rodin. Rosso developed a rivalry with Rodin; as Rodin’s fame increased, Rosso displayed his insecurity by accusing him of stealing his ideas.

Rosso’s rather sparse output was confined to about fifty original works in twenty years. For the last 20 years he made no original work, only casting recasting some earlier works. He achieved some acclaim in the early 1900’s but once Cubism took hold in 1910, Rosso’s was eclipsed. His use of coloured wax to mimic qualities of stone, wood and flesh adds vibrance to his works. He is firmly in the Impressionist camp because his subjects are taken from his everyday life. Moreover, his surfaces imitate the effect of shadows and movement, as in his veils. Finally the patina is deliberately rough, making him an iconoclast among his peers. Only at close range do his casts reveal their figurative forms. Impressionist paintings are the direct opposite: they appear realistic from a distance and become rather abstract at close range (9).

Troubetzkoy was strongly influenced by the art of Medardo Rosso, in particular, by Rosso’s alternation of smooth and broken strokes on the surface of the sculpture and his “rough modeling”. Unlike Rosso, who aspired to “make himself forget about matter”, Troubetzkoy always maintained a balance between the basic elements of a sculpture and the space around them. The surface of his sculptures acquired an individuality: the “rough” strokes became more elegant and cultured. 

It was Rodin who first discovered the potential of the Impressionist form. An important feature of this form is that “when presented only through its characteristic points, it stronger stirs up the imagination and creative mind of the beholder” (Vladimir Domogatsky). Relying on the eye’s tendency to resent the absence (or deformation) of a proper form in its proper place, the viewer would reinstate the natural form in his imagination.

Rodin is often seen in connection with the older sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, collaborator Camille Claudel or viewed as a founder of Modernist sculptor – particularly in the light of his sawing up of plaster casts of his pieces. So realistic was the early Age of Bronze figure (1875-7) that Rodin was accused of passing off a life-cast as a modelled sculpture – a very modern tactic, but one which Rodin vigorously disputed. Rodin’s work sometimes remained unfinished, which gave it an affinity with Impressionist practice. The case for Rodin as an Impressionist is more tangential than with the others. Rodin’s radical approach to the Burghers of Calais (1884-9) was compared to that of Monet, whom he exhibited beside once in 1889 (10).

Troubetzkoy first met his fellow sculptor Auguste Rodin in the winter of 1905, when they worked together. The two men became friends, and it was around this time that Troubetzkoy conceived of his sculpted portrait of Rodin.  Rodin stands with his hands in his trouser pockets, his left leg slightly forward, looking ahead (see image at the start of this article). The base of the statue is roughly modelled and irregular in shape. The figure leans against a supporting stump to waist height, also roughly modelled. 

Rodin’s discovery of the method of enhancing form and emphasizing its characteristics had a limitless potential, and Rodin himself, very soon after the discovery, took the form to new heights – the pinnacle coming in 1900 at the World Fair in Paris. This innovative approach determined the aesthetics and artistic language of the early 20th century.

The sculptures above show how Rodin’s interpretation of shapes and form was also adopted by Troubetzkoy. Both sculptures have as a base an irregular and roughly modelled shape, enhancing the visual impression of “the moment”, as well as having their female figures emerge from the ground.

While Rodin’s style is characterized by a particular emphasis on emotion and expressiveness, Troubetzkoy demonstrates how his artistic output, even if influenced by Rodin at times, was “immune to external influences” (6).

Troubetzkoy’s elongated and elegant figures demonstrates his gradual development towards a more neutral style, particularly suitable for an international society portraitist. Troubetzkoy had been one of the very few able to apply the principles of impressionist sculpture to an aristocratic and more commercial context.

The lifespan of sculptural Impressionism was actually around a third of the lifespan of Impressionism in painting, because sculptors picked up the trend much later than painters. Rodin, Maillol, Bourdelle and Bernard developed and elaborated the Impressionist form. They were followed by Archipenko, Zadkine, Lipchitz, Moore and other avant-garde artists. They might for example use convexities in places diametrically opposite to where they should be in real-life objects, or holes within sculpted objects — are. Objects whose forms were modeled by the artist’s mind were becoming ubiquitous (11).

Inspired by different shapes and natural objects, Henry Moore’s works testify the transition from impressionism towards a new and abstract aesthetic, breaking traditional art standards. 

A noteworthy character in the Impressionist environment was Rembrandt Bugatti, known primarily as an animalier sculptor, combining naturalism with a strong impression of movement (12). He regularly visited zoos in Paris and Antwerp, sculpting the animals directly in front of them. Troubetzkoy shared with Bugatti the love for animals and sculpting style based on vibrancy and movement.

“Whereas the modelling of [Bugatti’s] contemporary Paul Troubetzkoy appeared quick and slick, every mark counted in Bugatti’s brilliantly sculpted pieces. Using plastilene, he pinched, nipped and pressed the material with immense skill” (13).

Echoes of impressionism appear much later in the work of Bourdelle’s student Alberto Giacometti. Giacometti was to explore similar ideas:

“Since I wanted to realise a little of what I saw, I decided, in desperation, to work at home from memory…This resulted, after many efforts which touched on Cubism…in objects which were for me as close as I could get to my vision of reality“14

It could be argued that Troubetzkoy had anticipated Giacometti’s work. Both works are characterized by stretched and light figures, as well as an intensified sharpness of the bronze. Facial details and features, which are still visible in Troubetzkoy’s work, fade in Giacometti’s Femme de Venise VIII.

Sculptural impressionism’s open attitude towards materials, surfaces as well as body shapes and poses marked the remaking of traditional 19^th century techniques, and paved the way for future art movements, where geometric forms start taking over.

References

1. Alexander Adams Art, “Impressionist Sculpture”, 15^th July 2020 https://alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-troubetzkoy/Jo Lawson-Tancred, “What did Impressionism mean for sculpture?”, 14^th October 2020, https://www.apollo-magazine.com/impressionist-sculpture-staedel-museum-review/
2. Trevor Fairbrother, Arts Magazine 6 (February 1987), p. 64-71
3. Madeleine Emerald Thiele, “Sargent The Impressionist”, accessed 31^st March 2021, https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpress.com/2016/07/16/sargent-the-impressionist/amp/
4. Tate, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, accessed 31^st March 2021,  https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sargent-carnation-lily-lily-rose-n01615
5. Shaw: An Autobiography 1898 – 1950, selected from his writings by Stanley Weintraub
6. Alexander Adams Art, “Impressionist Sculpture”, 15^th July 2020, https://alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-troubetzkoy/
7. The J. Paul Getty Museum, “The Dancer Statuette by Paolo Troubetzkoy and the Incredible Life of Countess Thamara Swirskaya”, https://www.getty.edu/museum/programs/lectures/desmas_lecture.html
8. Alexander Adams Art, “Impressionist Sculpture”, 15^th July 2020, https://alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-troubetzkoy/
9. Svetlana Domogatskaya, “Paolo Troubetzkoy and Russia”, The Tretyakov Gallery Magazin, issue n. 2, 2009, https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/2-2009-23/paolo-troubetzkoy-and-russia
10. Alexander Adams Art, “Impressionist Sculpture”, 15^th July 2020, https://alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-troubetzkoy/
11. Svetlana Domogatskaya, “Paolo Troubetzkoy and Russia”, The Tretyakov Gallery Magazin, issue n. 2, 2009, https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/2-2009-23/paolo-troubetzkoy-and-russia
12. Sladmore Gallery, “Rembrandt Bugatti”, https://sladmore.com/artists/rembrandt-bugatti/#a
13. Sladmore Gallery, “Rembrandt Bugatti”, https://sladmore.com/artists/rembrandt-bugatti/#a
14. 1901-1966 (Exhibition Catalogue), National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh & Kunsthalle, Vienna, 1996, p. 12.

Paul Troubetzkoy was born in 1866 at Intra, on the shores of the Lake Maggiore in Italy, about sixty miles from Milan. His father was a Russian prince who had married American opera singer Ada Winans and settled in Italy. So the colourful world of Italian opera – centred on La Scala, made a strong impression on him from an early age. 

A bust of the legendary Russian opera singer, Fedor Chaliapin was modelled around 1898-1900 during Troubetzkoy’s visit to Russia. The sculptor was introduced to Chaliapin, then a young promising singer, by Savva Mamontov, a wealthy industrialist, art patron and a passionate theatre supporter. In a letter to the artist I.E. Bondarenko, Ilia Repin noted that Troubetskoy enjoyed listening to the singer and immediately started working on the bust: Troubetzkoy made two busts: one in painted plaster and the other in bronze’ (undated letter).

Troubetzkoy’s 1897 bronze portrait of Adelaide Aurnheimer (Fig 2) also known as Dopo il Ballo (After the Ball), is one of many which defines him as the ‘Singer Sergent of Sculpture’. She is dressed as the eponymous tragic heroine from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut, premiered previously at the Teatro Regio in Turin. 

The fluidity of Troubetzkoy’s modelling technique suggests a portrait painter’s approach to sculptural form as he dabs clay with an impressionist’s touch which has encouraged comparisons with his contemporaries. Giovanni Boldini’s portrait of Lady Gertrude Campbell in the National Portrait Gallery, London (Fig 3) is one example; it evokes the elegance of the period and draws the viewer into the narrative, as if Lady Campbell had just glided onto a banquette at a grand ball. A similar example is John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw in the National Gallery of Scotland (Fig 4). In each case their long ball gowns create undulating forms that cascade from the bodies of the sitters. Such comparisons position Troubetzkoy as the pre-eminent sculptor of the fin-de-siècle high society.

The three great figures in early 20th Century opera, Puccini, Caruso and Toscanini, were all modelled by Troubetzkoy in 1912. 

When Troubetzkoy first arrived in Milan in 1884, Giacomo Puccini’s first opera was being staged. Puccini and Troubetzkoy became friends and were both influenced by other poets, writers, musicians and artists who were part of the so-called ‘Scapigliati’.

In the grounds of the villa at Torre del Lago where Giacomo Puccini spent the last 30 years of his life, on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, a lifesize statue of the composer smoking a cigarette, dominates the landscape. It is one of Troubetzkoy’s most iconic works. This was long before the link between smoking and cancer was identified. Sadly, Puccini died of complications of laryngeal cancer at only sixty-five.

The 1924 statue was based on Troubetzkoy’s 1912 cast of Puccini. Luigi Troubetzkoy recalls in his memoirs that he was called to the opera house by Toscanini who instructed him to send a telegram to his brother Paul to arrange a meeting to discuss the commission.

The sculptor depicted the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso in stage costume as Dick Johnson alias Ramerres in the Puccini opera “La fanciulla del West” (The Girl of the West). No doubt, he was inspired by photographs such as the one below taken during the performance. 

In this role, Caruso fully transitioned from verismo’s Sicilian peasant to a working-class rebel in the American mould. Puccini wrote to Caruso on 13 January 1911: “Tell me how Fanciulla is doing, if the crowds are flocking to it and if it is paying me well [..]. I salute you, O singer of many notes, and hope that the cheek of a fanciulla [girl] will lie on your breast […] A kiss to my Rodolfo [of La Bohème] and my extraordinary Johnson from him who wishes you well.”

The opera premiered on December 10, 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera Theater, New York. It was the first world premier the Met had mounted. They spared no expense in turning the premier into a glittering social occasion, giving ‘exclusive’ advance interviews with conductor Toscanini and composer Puccini. Tickets were sold for twice their normal price, and on the black market some seats sold for $150 – an astronomical sum in 1910. After the final aria ‘Addio, California’ there were no fewer than fifty-five curtain calls.

As depicted in Edith Wharton’s novel The Custom of the Country, the Met was THE place to be seen -and even to snare a husband. Listening to music took a back seat to social climbing. Little wonder then that the great socialite Paul Troubetzkoy chose this location and this performance for his bronze of Caruso.  The tenor, the composer and the sculptor were all at the height of their powers in 1910.

Paul Troubetzkoy mixed with celebrities of his day on both sides of the Atlantic. Among his best works were a small number of portraits of talented young women who achieved fame for their dancing abilities. Firstly his ‘Danseuse’ of 1910, then his 1914 Lady Constance Stewart Richardson depicted the notable Scottish dancer and suffragette (1883-1932) and finally his 1915 cast of Irene Castle. In each of these sculptures, the subject appears entirely wrapped up in their thoughts, unaware of the viewer. 

Troubetzkoy’s 1910 Danseuse was modelled on Thamara de Svirsky (1883-1972). De Svirsky was an international artist, pianist and dancer, appearing in many leading roles in the early 20th century and collaborating with Igor Stravinsky and Edvard Grieg. She was also known for dancing barefoot. “Her costumes are triumphs of sartorial amplitude,” declared one disappointed critic. “They leave everything to the imagination.”(1)

Of Russian origin, it was in Paris that she met Prince Paul Troubetzkoy when he left Russia in 1905. Following this meeting, he modelled Tamara with an energy, a fluidity and refinement which characterizes his work. 

American critics immediately recognised the quality and modernity of Troubetzkoy’s works, not least the art critic Charles L. Borgmeyer, who wrote about the bronze of Thamara: “(Standing) in front of the ‘Dancer’, who has abandoned her old-fashioned ballet skirt, removed her stockings, dancing without shoes or stockings, dressed only in loose and flowing draperies, one can only marvel at the charm and grace of this  small bronze figure; of the achievement of beauty in dance, an expression of art formulated in a universal language” (2).

 Lady Constance Stewart-Richardson was a flamboyant and charismatic woman of many talents. She was best known for her career as a barefoot classical dancer, an unheard of profession for a titled woman. Her revealing dance costumes caused uproar in Edwardian society.

In 1914 Paul Troubetzkoy modelled a bronze sculpture on Lady Constance observing: ‘it is rare that such exuberant vitality is combined with such perfect lines and grace of movement.’ ‘Describing his technique he said ‘I try to portray the spiritual, the abstract – the body animated by the spirit within, not the external features alone.’ In this work he captured the grace and tenacity of Lady Constance more accurately than any other artist.

Troubetzkoy’s bronze of Irene Castle was created a year later. As well as being one of the great celebrities of the early 20th C., Irene was a leading animal rights activist; Troubetzkoy of course was a committed vegetarian. Her life with husband and dance partner Vernon, who died as a fighter pilot in WW1, was later dramatized by Irving Berlin in ‘The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle’, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 

This video clip of Vernon and Irene Castle from the silent film “Whirl of Life” recreates the 1912 Paris performances that attracted Troubetzkoy:

Gilbert Seldes penned this eloquent description of Irene in 1924 “No one else has ever given exactly that sense of being freely perfect, of moving without effort and without will, in more than accord, in absolutely identity with the music. There was always something unimpassioned, cool not cold, in her abandon; it was certainly the least sensual dancing in the world; the whole appeal was visual. It was as if the eye following her graceful motion across a stage was gratified by its own orbit, and found a sensuous pleasure in the ease of her line, in the disembodied lightness of her footfall, in the careless slope of her lovely shoulders. There was only dancing, and it was all that one ever dreamed of flight, with wings poised, and swooping down”.

His sculpture exhibits an expression of fixed concentration as she conducts her performance, which is balanced by an air of ethereality, created by her open pose and flowing gown. This loose style of dress would later be adopted by ‘the flappers’ and set a trend that would endure throughout the 1920’s. 

References

1 Edward F. O’Day, “Thamara de Svirsky Disappointed” San Francisco Daily Times (November 12, 1910): 8.

2 Charles L. Borgmeyer, Prince Paul Troubetzkoy – Sculptor, in Fine Arts Journal, Chicago, July 1911, p.13.

John Sergio Grioni was born in 1938, the year Paul Troubetzkoy died, and by the time his lifelong interest in the sculptor began, Troubetzkoy had, as he later wrote, become “a forgotten celebrity”.  Already in his student years in Rome, John made an extensive study of the artist, laying the foundation for his tireless promotion of the latter’s work through the numerous articles and publications that were to follow.  Unable to finance research on the scale his ambition demanded, he nonetheless continued to assemble documents and gather information on Troubetzkoy from all imaginable sources throughout his life, in later years with the assistance of his partner, Alena Trnkalova, with whom he moved to Bratislava.

John was not alone in developing a passion for sculpture by Troubetzkoy.  Early interest from the Sladmore Gallery, one of London’s foremost sculpture dealers, shows that the work had not gone unnoticed.¹  Troubetzkoy’s connection with Rembrandt Bugatti ensured that the younger artist’s emergence as the most sought-after sculptor of animal subjects also brought his illustrious forerunner increased attention.  A milestone was reached when Alain Lesieutre, the flamboyant Paris dealer, paid a record price for a cast of Troubetzkoy’s masterpiece portrait of Robert de Montesquiou, approaching one million francs.²  This result, achieved as the millennium drew to a close, still ranks as one of the top three recorded for the artist.

Edward Horswell, who took over the Sladmore Gallery from his father, afforded John as much support as he could, encouraging his projects, putting the gallery’s resources at his disposal and helping him with funds to pursue his research.  It was thanks to Edward’s generosity that I encountered John for the first time in London on the occasion of the Sladmore Gallery’s 2008 Troubetzkoy exhibition, for which Edward had asked me to write an introduction.³  Edward had invited John to stay in London for a few days and this gave me the opportunity at last to meet this elusive expert.  I discovered a man of great charm and culture, like myself of English and Italian parents, fluent in several languages, quick-witted, urbane, elegant, and fiercely uncompromising and independent in his views.  He had retained a nostalgia for the world of the “sculptor-prince” that was inevitably at odds with certain aspects of contemporary society.

Sadly, John died suddenly in January 2013, leaving his life’s work unfinished.  Alena knew the value of what he had managed to accomplish but was not in a position to continue in John’s footsteps on her own.  I travelled to see her and we were able to come to an agreement to preserve all the materials John had assembled, then divided between Bratislava and Rome, where some of his documents had long remained in storage.  I thus became custodian of John’s archive for a few years and set about the challenging task of sorting a mass of documents of every description accumulated over more than fifty years in such a way as to make the information they contained accessible.  John had always wanted to bring Alena to Paris and I was granted the satisfaction of fulfilling this wish when she accepted my invitation to spend a few days in the city as my guest.  I reserved a room for her overlooking the Tuileries Gardens, at a hotel of which I was sure John would have approved.

When I met James Drake, I was struck by his irrepressible enthusiasm for Troubetzkoy (among his many other pursuits) and his determination to restore the sculptor to the position he deserves by making his work more generally known and studied.  James believes information should be widely available to the scholarly community and his project to convert documents into digital form would achieve that aim.  My own conviction is that a catalogue raisonné establishes a corpus of study, defines an artist’s oeuvre and allows us better than any other tool to grasp its full significance.  It is an important step in helping to establish the standard by which we may judge the quality of a bronze sculpture, cast from a model directly fashioned by an artist.  A critical catalogue lends visibility and authority to the many years of attentive observation that enable the experienced specialist confidently to distinguish authentic pieces among the astonishing number of late or dubious examples that are ever more prevalent at auction and elsewhere.

The energy and resources James promised to bring persuaded me that John’s legacy would best be served by accepting to sell the materials I had acquired from Alena to the Troubetzkoy Archive Project.  Enlightened collectors are now willing to pay high prices for the best examples of the artist’s work, museum curators are showing interest in planning exhibitions to acquaint a wider public with it; the time has come for greater clarity to be brought to the disparate set of objects associated with his name.⁴  It is hoped that this brief tribute will have made apparent John’s essential part in making all of this possible.

1. Jane Horswell, with her husband founder of the Sladmore Gallery, lists Troubetzkoy alongside Degas, Bugatti, Pompon and Haseltine in the introduction to her 1971 survey Bronze Sculpture of “Les Animaliers”, Woodbridge, Sussex that was to remain the standard reference work on the subject for at least a decade.  The Sladmore Gallery was also the principal contributor to an important exhibition on the other side of the Channel in which sculpture by the artist was included: Paris, Galerie Paul Ambroise, Un Siècle de bronzes animaliers: 1875-1975, March – April 1975.

2. Maîtres Pescheteau-Badin, Godeau et Leroy, Maître François de Ricqlès, Estampes et Tableaux Modernes, Sculptures, Art Contemporain, Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, 28 November 1999, lot no.63, sold for a hammer price of 740,000 FRF.  The buyer’s premium charged by the auctioneers was 9% plus tax, a far cry from the now common rate of 25% exclusive of tax, but bringing the total price paid to well over 800.000 FRF.

3. London, The Sladmore Gallery, Prince Paul Troubetzkoy: The Belle Epoque Captured in Bronze, 21 May – 27 June 2008.

4. An exhibition to mark the 150^th anniversary of Troubetzkoy’s birth was held at the Museo del Paesaggio in Verbania, 26 June – 30 October 2016. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, held a show of some 80 works from 22 June – 26 August 2018: Скульптор Паоло Трубецкой. A major exhibition with an important section on Troubetzkoy entitled en passant: Impressionism in Sculpture was held at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 19 March – 25 October 2020.  Organised by Philipp Demandt, Alexander Eiling and Eva Mongi-Vollmer, the show was accompanied by a scholarly catalogue and preceded by a well-attended and thought-provoking colloquium.  Restrictions due to the pandemic unfortunately limited its impact.

On the first floor of the magnificent Musée D’Orsay you will find an imposing bronze of Count Robert de Montesquiou, once the arbiter of elegance in Paris society. Appropriately it stands in front of a portrait of his contemporary Marcel Proust by Jacques-Emile Blanche. Paul Troubetzkoy’s 1907 cast highlights the subject’s haughty profile, his arched silhouette, his slender fingers and the intricate design of his outfit. 

Troubetzkoy was not alone in capturing this extraordinary dandy for posterity. His sculpture of the Count was a three-dimensional equivalent of coveted portraits by the Anglo-Hungarian Laszlo, the French La Gandara, the Americans Whistler and Singer Sergent, the Swiss Louise Breslau and the Italian Giovanni Boldini. The latter’s immortal portrait of the Count has him seated, in profile, the diagonal of his body counterbalancing that of his cane, in shades of gray.  

Montesquiou’s idiosyncratic behaviour was the stuff of dreams for a sculptor whose own life was no less quirky. At the beginning of any conversation, the dandy would remove one glove and launch a series of gesticulations, raising his hands towards the sky, lowering them to touch the tip of one perfectly buffed shoe, or waving them as though conducting an orchestra. It is said that Montesquiou would burst into the laughter of an hysterical woman, then clap his hand over his mouth to quieten himself. Most likely the reason for this abrupt gesture was that, despite his handsome physique, his teeth were small and black.

Perhaps the most vivid portrait of the Count appears in a delightful 1925 memoir by Elisabeth de Gramont: “Leaning on the railing of my upper balcony one bright spring morning, gazing down onto the Avenue I was suddenly struck by the appearance of a tall, elegant personage in mouse-gray, waving a well-gloved hand in my direction as he emerged swiftly from the green shadow of the chestnut trees into the yellow sunlight of the sidewalk. He must have been in an unusually conservative frame of mind that day to have appeared in mouse-gray. He might, likely as not, have turned up in sky-blue, or in his famous almond-green outfit with a white velvet waistcoat. He selected his costume to tone with his moods and his moods were as varied as the iridescent silk which lined some of his jackets.”

De Montesquiou’s place in contemporary literature is well-known: his idiosyncrasies have been immortalised in the shape of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s character Des Esseintes (A Rebours, 1884), Jean Lorrain’s Comte de Muzarett (Monsieur de Phocas, 1901), Henri de Régnier’s Vicomte de Serpigny (Le Mariage de Minuit, 1903), Edmond Rostand’s Peacock (Chanteclerc, 1907), and above all Marcel Proust’s Baron de Charlus (Remembrance of Things Past). More recently, in Julian Barnes’ prize-winning novel The Man in the Red Coat, Montesquiou was the ultimate example of the aristocrat-dandy. Even in childhood he was surrounded by exotic imagery: for example his grandfather kept rare white peacocks “roosting in a catalpa tree”. Léon Daudet wrote that the Count was an aesthete, one for whom ‘thought is less value than vision”. Daudet described him as being “ageless, as though varnished for eternity”, a description no less applicable to the magnificent sculpture by Paul Troubetzkoy.