The women of Alfred Agache

A rarity on the market, the painter from Lille invites himself to Oise with this important female portrait, dated 1898 and exhibited three years later at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.

On the stretcher, on the back of this painting from a Bordeaux collection, an American museum label is still clearly visible : “Carnegie Institute Annual Exhibition Pittsburgh”. The institution, founded in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), comprised three departments : Library, Museum of Natural History and Museum of art. As confirmed by the latter, with the help of a period photograph, this painting was present at the Carnegie Institute’s sixth annual international exhibition in 1901. The French artist, son of industrialists from Lille, also exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, winning a gold medal for his paintings Vanité and L’Annonciation. His symbolism-tinged paintings were hugely popular, both in Europe and across the Atlantic. Like this work, he specialized in female portraits, lending an enigmatic atmosphere to his models’ attitudes – here the little finger gesture, perhaps pointing to the signature or bouquet – as well as to his choice of accessories and settings: witness the composition’s wallpapered background and the single small white vase on a table, holding what might be a four-leaf clover. This dark-haired woman, with her aquiline profile and haughty bearing, appears on several other works by the artist, such as La Femme aux chardons (Woman with thistles ) at La Piscine in Roubaix, and La Diseuse de bonne aventure (The Fortune Teller), a canvas that sold for €39 ,576 at Sotheby’s New York on May 23, 1996 (127 x 50 cm). It was a trip to Japan lasting over a year, begun in 1872, that decided Alfred Agache to turn to painting, abandoning music at the time. His time in Italy was particularly memorable, with the discovery of the Old Masters and the Renaissance. After graduating from the Lille academic school, he developed a consensus in his Paris studio, with smooth workmanship and classical compositions on the one hand, and Symbolist themes and references on the other, which intrigued enthusiasts of his time. Several of his paintings are in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, where he was curator in 1894 and 1895.