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Edouard de Biefve (Belgian, 1808-1882). The Almeh (The Sultan's Favorite), 1842. Oil on canvas. 47 x 75 inches (119.4 x ...
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Sold on Dec 7, 2023 for:
$21,250.00
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Description
Edouard de Biefve (Belgian, 1808-1882)The Almeh (The Sultan's Favorite), 1842
Oil on canvas
47 x 75 inches (119.4 x 190.5 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: E. de Biefve. 1842.
PROVENANCE:
Anonymous sale, London, 1978;
Private collection, Coronado, California;
Private collection, Los Angeles, California, acquired from the above.
EXHIBITED:
Brussels Salon, 1842.
LITERATURE:
J. Matus, Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity, Manchester, 1995, pp. 135-137;
I. King, "Cleopatra Imagery in 19th-Century English Novels: 'Middlemarch' and 'Villette'," Owlcation.com, July 2022.
During his lifetime, Édouard de Bièfve enjoyed lavish artistic honors as well as royal and aristocratic patronage in Belgium, France, and throughout the German-speaking world for his portraits and enormous history paintings. The latter were richly colored, mural-size productions featuring casts of hundreds and designed to celebrate important events in Belgium's history. A member of a well-to-do Belgian noble family, de Bièfve moved effortlessly in the best circles, enjoyed a first-rate education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels under a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and then trained in Paris in the studio of the great French Romantic sculptor David d'Anger. While de Bièfve and his circle embraced the French Romantic movement, they maintained the precise, academic brushwork favored in their country and in Germany, eschewing the spirited and expressionistic approach of the French enfant terrible, Eugène Delacroix. De Bièfve was a regular exhibitor at the Salons in Paris, Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels.
After his extensive travels to the courts of Prussia, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and becoming a member of the Academies of Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and Vienna, de Bièfve returned to his native Brussels permanently in 1841. Around this time, in addition to his recognized repertoire, he began exploring Orientalism, a new subject that was growing in popularity throughout Europe. Scenes of harem girls, slave markets, dancers, courtesans, Middle Eastern marketplaces, figures strolling in blossoming courtyards, and merchants and street musicians began appearing in impressive numbers at the annual exhibitions. While some of these efforts were based on journeys to the East, a great many were purely fantasies of exoticism and eroticism.
At the 1842 Brussels Salon, Édouard de Bièfve participated in the Orientalist rage with this monumental painting of an Egyptian dancing girl reclining on a lavishly ornate carpet-covered couch, entitled Une Almeé or The Almeh. The painting caused a sensation at the exhibition, riveting many viewers and scandalizing others who believed it to be flagrantly sexual even though the sitter wasn't even nude. Interestingly, The Almeh garnered de Bièfve much more public attention than the acres of history paintings he had produced to date (which in hindsight became regarded as nationalistic propaganda). The Almeh became both his most famous, and infamous, work.
Despite the enormous celebrity it received at its inaugural exhibition in Brussels, and the prodigious amount of ink spilled over it both by contemporary figures (including novelist Charlotte Brontë) and current art historians interested in depictions of women and the male gaze, The Almeh's whereabouts have been unrecorded for most of its existence. It last surfaced on the art market in London in 1978 and has been in private hands for the past 45 years before emerging this year as an important and exciting rediscovery.
Why did this painting create such a succès de scandale in 1842? Why were some of the responses so highly charged? An examination of the connotations of the title, the properties of the beautifully painted composition itself, and some contemporary reactions provide fascinating insights into the period in which it was produced. De Bièfve's title, Une Almée, was in fact a loaded one in 1842. The original Arabic term referred to an educated class of female entertainers who sang and recited poetry during festivals and private entertainments. The women were of good social standing and neither danced nor displayed themselves but sang from behind a screen or in another room during the festivities. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the term devolved into a synonym for an erotic dancer-cum-prostitute, someone from an impoverished, uneducated background and therefore the antithesis of the original meaning. The term in France became synonymous with a belly dancer or any female dancer whose dance carried a sexual connotation.
In examining de Bièfve's Almeh with twentieth-century eyes, the painting seems rather restrained, far from a presentation of a voluptuary. Looking closely though we can perceive a few triggers. For one, the woman is not dancing but rather reclining languidly on a sofa piled with cushions while pointing to the mattress with one finger as if to say, "Come join me." Her gaze is direct rather than averted, the latter being a sign of modesty expected of nineteenth-century women. By staring straight into the viewer's eyes, the Almeh would have been breaching decorum, and again seeming to signal an invitation to "come hither." In this way, de Bièfve's Almeh looks forward to an even more infamous painting, Manet's Olympia (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) painted 21 years later in 1863. Olympia, by contrast, is a completely nude, well-known prostitute, staring straight at the viewer without false modesty or any shame whatsoever as if to say, "I am what I am. If you have a problem with me, don't look!"
De Bièfve devoted meticulous attention to the many textures in his painting, creating a rich level of sensuality from their contrasts alone: carpet on the bed, flowers, glazed vases and tilework, the sitter's glossy hair, pearls, her firm skin. The woman's garments drape her body loosely, with the silk clinging to all her curves. The plunging neckline reveals much more breast than Victorians would permit, with decorative cutwork revealing what would have been considered tantalizing glimpses of flesh at intervals along her thighs. De Bièfve's garment provides an example of the mere implication of nudity offering a more erotic charge than complete nakedness.
One of the most extensive reactions to de Bièfve's Almeh appears in a work of fiction by the well-known British novelist Charlotte Brontë, who happened to be in Brussels at the time of The Almeh's display at the 1842 Salon. She incorporated what seems to have been her own aversion to the painting in her novel Villette published in London in 1853 (see the 1977 reprint by Dent, London, p. 180). In the novel, Brontë's protagonist Lucy Snowe (the writer's surrogate) happens upon what she describes as a painting of Cleopatra in one gallery where the work has been installed in a prominent location (see G. Charlier, 'Brussels Life in "Villette": A Visit to the Salon in 1842,' Brontë Society Transactions, vol. 12, no. 5, 1955, pp. 386-390 for an English translation of Brontë's passage and the identification of de Bièfve's The Almeh with Brontë's Cleopatra). She writes with considerable acerbic irony, detailing what bothered her most about the painting. The nature of her objection, if she is being honest with the reader, is somewhat surprising:
"One day, at a quiet early hour, I found myself nearly alone in a certain gallery, wherein one particular picture of portentous size, set up in the best light, having a cordon of protection stretched before it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the accommodation of worshipping connoisseurs, who, having gazed themselves off their feet, might be fain to complete the business sitting: this picture, I say, seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection.
It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life. I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude, suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone. She was, indeed, extremely well fed: very much butcher's meat-to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids-must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh. She lay half-reclined on a couch: why, it would be difficult to say; broad daylight blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks; she could not plead a weak spine; she ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. She had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of abundance of material-seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery-she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, for the wretched untidiness surrounding her, there could be no excuse. Pots and pans-perhaps I ought to say vases and goblets-were rolled here and there on the foreground; a perfect rubbish of flowers was mixed amongst them, and an absurd and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring to the catalogue, I found that this notable production bore the name "Cleopatra."
Well, I was sitting wondering at it (as the bench was there, I thought I might as well take advantage of its accommodation) and thinking that while some of the details-as roses, gold cups, jewels, &c., were very prettily painted, it was on the whole an enormous piece of claptrap; the room, almost vacant when I entered, began to fill. Scarcely noticing this circumstance (as, indeed, it did not matter to me) I retained my seat; rather to rest myself than with a view to studying this huge, dark-complexioned gipsy-queen; of whom, indeed, I soon tired, and betook myself for refreshment to the contemplation of some exquisite little pictures of still life: wild-flowers, wild-fruit, mossy wood-nests, casketing eggs that looked like pearls seen through clear green sea-water; all hung modestly beneath that coarse and preposterous canvas."
How should we read Charlotte Brontë's reaction (via Lucy Snowe)? Is it possible that she was barely managing to disguise her jealousy when confronting de Bièfve's woman, who has a more powerful female presence than she? Was this a prudish vent of her repressed sexuality and general squeamishness concerning all things humanly sensual? It is fascinating that Lucy Snowe seemed to have been bothered most by the figure's girth and apparent indolence, lying around during the day instead of working (Brontë's good Protestant work ethic may have caused her to pass judgment). To today's audience, it is fair to say that both things would have been far from our minds, especially as de Bièfve's Almeh is beautifully proportioned. Instead, we appreciate the considerable technical skill of the painter, and perhaps consider how this presentation of a woman as an object of desire-male desire-would be portrayed today? And would it be far fetched to wonder whether Charlotte Brontë was responding to the painting as something "fantastic"-or as she wrote "preposterous"-because it was not a reflection of reality at all but rather a fantasy? A male fantasy? Could she have been more progressive than we give her credit for?
Although The Almeh's first purchaser is unfortunately unrecorded, a surviving letter from Édouard de Bièfve to a fellow history painter named Louis Gallait dated September 14, 1842 reveals that his asking price for the painting was an impressive 3,200 francs. The substantial price tag provides an important indication of the artist's own gauge of the painting's excellence.
De Bièfve's painting became more widely known through the lithograph made after it, entitled The Sultan's Favourite Songstress (1878), which was published in Georg Ebers' Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, vol. 1, New York, 1878, p. 285.
More information about de Biefve, Edouard Artist.
Condition Report*:
Lined canvas, waxed at tacking edges. Scattered instances of very minor frame abrasion at edges. Yellowing to the varnish layer. Craquelure throughout, with scattered instances of more pronounced pigment separation and cracking. A short vertical crack in lower right quadrant protrudes somewhat from the surface. Extensive small losses scattered throughout, and appear to be stabilized beneath the heavy varnish layer. Minor surface dirt and dust. Not examined out of frame due to size.
Under UV: heavily applied varnish fluoresces green, somewhat obscuring the picture surface. Some scattered brushy retouching in the background and near edges. Two notable thin vertical lines of retouching in left side of the work, measuring approximately 1 and 2 feet in height, respectively.
Framed Dimensions 66.5 X 93 X 5.5 Inches
*Heritage Auctions strives to provide as much information as possible but encourages in-person inspection by bidders.
Statements regarding the condition of objects are only for general guidance and should not be relied upon as complete statements of fact, and do not constitute a representation,
warranty or assumption of liability by Heritage. Some condition issues may not be noted in the condition report but are apparent in the provided photos which are considered part of the condition report.
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Heritage does not guarantee the condition of frames and shall not be liable for any damage/scratches to frames, glass/acrylic coverings, original boxes, display accessories, or art that has slipped in frames.
All lots are sold "AS IS" under the Terms & Conditions of Auction.Under UV: heavily applied varnish fluoresces green, somewhat obscuring the picture surface. Some scattered brushy retouching in the background and near edges. Two notable thin vertical lines of retouching in left side of the work, measuring approximately 1 and 2 feet in height, respectively.
Framed Dimensions 66.5 X 93 X 5.5 Inches
Auction Info
2023 December 7 Fine European Art Signature® Auction #8147 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
December, 2023
7th
Thursday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 3
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