The Petit Palais exhibits its latest purchases

1. Carolus-Duran (1837-1917)
Portrait of Madame Ernest Feydeau, between 1870 and 1873
Oil on canvas - 53.5 x 39 cm
Paris, Petit Palais
Photo : Paris Musées (public domain)

See the image in its page

3/7/23 - Acquisitions - Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris - As nature abhors a vacuum, it seemed unfortunate to close off part of the lower level of the Paris museum between temporary exhibitions, even if the two rotundas framing the gallery where the Devambez retrospective could be admired a few months ago (see l’article) remained unoccupied until the opening of prints anthologuy scheduled for the autumn. Recently bolstered by the arrival of a new curator, Sandra Buratti-Hasan, the teams at the Petit Palais, now headed by Annick Lemoine, have therefore improvised a display for a few months presenting a selection of works acquired between 2013 and 2023, while also paying tribute to the patrons, legatees and donors who made these fine additions possible. Many of these works have been reviewed in La Tribune de l’Art, an attentive observer of municipal acquisitions in the capital, but some had escaped us! Such is the case of the portrait (ill. 1) of Leocadia Boguslawa Zalewska (1838-1924), a demi-mondaine who married the writer Ernest Feydeau (1821-1873) and then the journalist Henry Fouquier (1838-1901). The mother of the famous playwright Georges Feydeau (1862-1921) was one of the countless Parisian personalities immortalized by Carolus-Duran, portraitist of Second Empire and Third Republic society. Feydeau’s daughter Marie-Anne married the master of vaudeville in 1889, well after the painting was donated to the museum in 2019 by Bruno Racine, a senior civil servant and writer who headed the Villa Médicis before becoming president of the Centre Pompidou and then the Bibliothèque nationale (BnF) until his retirement in 2016.

Initially built up from the rich collection bequeathed by the Dutuit brothers in 1902, the…