Albert Lynch 1860-1950

A certain confusion still surrounds the birth and death dates and places of Albert Lynch, largely due to the myth he cultivated around his own persona. While exhibition catalogues throughout his career mention the cities of Lima or Trujillo in Peru, the painter was in fact born in 1860 in Gleisweiler, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Relations between France and Germany in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War undoubtedly prompted the artist, established in Paris with his family from a young age, to adopt the nationality of his father, Diego Lynch, who was originally from Chachapoyas. A second, more commercial reason stems from the trajectory of his career. A successful society painter whose favorite subjects were young women with refined features, he preferred to cultivate a more exotic identity, presenting himself as a Peruvian artist of Irish descent, whose prodigious early talent justified his arrival in Paris, the capital of the arts.

Trained in the studios of Jules Noël, Henri Lehmann, and Gabriel Ferrier at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he began exhibiting at the Salon in 1879, receiving several official awards in 1890 and 1892. From 1899 onward, he participated in the exhibitions of the Société Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, held annually at the Galerie George Petit, and received commissions from around the world, particularly in the United States, where his work was highly prized. At the 1900 Exposition Universelle, he exhibited under the Peruvian pavilion and won a gold medal with a charming series of female portraits (cat. no. 14–18), before being made a Knight of the Legion of Honour the following year. Keen to disseminate his talent more widely, he also illustrated famous novels, creating watercolors for Alexandre Dumas fils’ La Dame aux Camélias, Balzac’s Le Père Goriot, and Henry Becque’s La Parisienne.

“He moves gently into the depths of his subjects and approaches their souls as if with a delicate and subtle caress. He translates it into a melancholy that, reflected in the woman, poetizes and adorns her.” Combining perfect technical mastery with a captivating subject, our small oil on panel encapsulates everything that made Albert Lynch successful and earned him praise from Henri Frantz in 1901. With remarkable economy of means, the artist captures the face of a young woman with a penetrating gaze. Using oil like gouache or watercolor on the prepared white panel, he conveys in a few fluid brushstrokes the expression of her eyes, the carmine lipstick sensually covering her mouth, the dark eyebrows beneath her wide chestnut hair adorned with roses, and the white décolleté of her dress. All of these elements draw the viewer into the world of the haute bourgeoisie, reflecting sophisticated elegance and courtly sentiment, in an era that celebrated feminine grace as its emblem - a world whose champions, alongside Lynch, included Stevens, Blanche, and Boldini.