Albert BARTHOLOMÉ - The Artist’s Nephew, Prosper Raymond de Fleury, Lying in Bed

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The Artist’s Nephew, Prosper Raymond de Fleury, Lying in Bed

Albert BARTHOLOMÉ

The Artist’s Nephew, Prosper Raymond de Fleury, Lying in Bed

The young subject of this superb pastel, Prosper Raymond de Fleury (1880-1960), was Bartholomé’s nephew by marriage. Although the present sheet is dated 1882 (possibly by a different hand from that of the artist), Thérèse Burollet, in her recently published catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works, has dated this pastel to 1887, which would accord better with the apparent age of the sitter. The eldest child of Prospérie de Fleury Bartholomé’s brother Olivier de Fleury, Georges-Marie Prosper Raymond de Fleury was born on 23rd April 1880 and appears in two other works by his uncle. A painting of him as a baby, accompanied by a nurse, was exhibited at the Salon in 1881 and is today in a private collection in Switzerland, while a pastel portrait of Prosper de Fleury at the age of three, wearing a sailor suit, is in a French private collection.

Relatively few pastels by Albert Bartholomé have survived to this day. (In her 2017 monograph and catalogue raisonné of Bartholomé’s work, Thérèse Burollet lists a total of nineteen pastels by the artist.) Among stylistically comparable examples is a pastel portrait of the artist’s first wife Prospérie reading, dated 1883, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Provenance: Given by the artist to the father of the sitter, Marquis Olivier de Fleury de Blanchefort, Paris
By descent to the sitter, Georges Marie Prosper Raymond de Fleury, Marquis de Fleury, Paris
Thence by descent until sold on the art market at an unknown date
John Lishawa through Michael Simpson, London, in 1996
Joseph and Deborah Goldyne, San Francisco
Private collection, San Francisco.

Literature: Robert Flynn Johnson and Joseph R. Goldyne, Judging by Appearance: Master Drawings from the Collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, 2006, pp.34-35, no.9; Thérèse Burollet, Albert Bartholomé 1848-1928, Paris, 2017, p.35, p.164, under no. P.8, p.173, under no. PA.8, pp.175-176, no.PA.16, illustrated p.34, fig.PA.16 (where dated 1887); Furio Rinaldi, Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, 2021-2022, pp.66-67, no.37.

Exhibition: San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, Judging by Appearance: Master Drawings from the Collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne, 2006, no.9; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, Color into Line: Pastels from the Renaissance to the Present, 2021-2022, no.37.

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