Madeleine Fleury 1860-1940

Born in 1860 in Constantinople, where her father served as a physician to the Turkish sultan, Madeleine Fleury was among the women artists who succeeded in making a name for themselves in the Parisian Salons. Settled in the capital, she studied successively under Félix-Joseph Barrias and Paul Mathey, before exhibiting from 1886 at the Salon des Artistes Français, where she received an honorable mention in 1889 for Intérieur breton (cat. no. 1040).

From 1892, she chose the more liberal Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, presided over by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, exhibiting a major work entitled Les Deuillantes (cat. no. 410). This composition, imbued with a poignant realism, reflects Fleury’s dedication to painting from life, inspired by her repeated travels in Brittany, where she eventually acquired a villa in Dinard, a well-known seaside resort on the Emerald Coast. A skilled pastellist, she regularly presented portraits in the “Dessins” section of the Salon and participated in 1895 and 1896 in the exhibitions of the Société des Femmes Artistes at the Galerie Georges Petit.

Well-connected in European aristocratic circles, she was invited at the turn of the century to England by the Duke of Connaught and his wife to teach painting and watercolor to their two daughters. Fleury developed a particularly close bond with the elder daughter, Margaret, who, after marrying Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf in 1905, became Princess of Sweden and invited Fleury regularly to the Stockholm court from 1906 onward.

Our large-format painting was very likely exhibited by Fleury during her first participation in the Salon des Artistes Français in 1886. Indeed, she presented a work titled Tristesse (cat. no. 947) that appears to correspond exactly to this composition. Set in the richly furnished interior of a bourgeois salon, with furniture and paintings, a young woman sits alone, perhaps just returned from an evening outing, gazing melancholically at the flames of a gray marble fireplace. The crackling is suggested only by the orange reflections illuminating her face and hair. Weary, almost absent, her left hand lets fall a round Japanese uchiwa fan to the floor.

In addition to the fireplace, Fleury masterfully plays with chiaroscuro, contrasting the fragile candle flames on the mantelpiece with an electric light partially hidden by a screen in the background. It is tempting to see the work as a self-portrait, as the model’s features closely match the brief physical description of Madeleine Fleury given many years later by Sigvard Bernadotte, the second son of Princess Margaret: “a small, slender woman with red hair.” Later a designer, illustrator, and creator, Sigvard paid one last tribute to the artist he deeply admired:

“I always loved her. It was as if she understood everything, nothing could surprise her. She painted superb portraits of young children in pastel or oil, lightly suggested but very alive.”