I think the California women are glorious. They are like the beauties of early Greece in their long lines
and splendid anatomy. They have verve and their faces are beautifully proportioned.
Dalí quoted by Mary Hicks Davidson, "Sur-realism 'Sincere Art': Dalí,"
The Call Bulletin, San Francisco, August 27, 1941, n.p.
and splendid anatomy. They have verve and their faces are beautifully proportioned.
Dalí quoted by Mary Hicks Davidson, "Sur-realism 'Sincere Art': Dalí,"
The Call Bulletin, San Francisco, August 27, 1941, n.p.
The 1940s were an important and prolific decade in terms of Dalí’s society portraiture, and undoubtedly the period in which the artist made his most eccentric, meticulous and appealing likenesses. Certainly the most significant factor impacting Dalí’s work of this decade was his taking up residence in America as an exile during World War II. Dalí and Gala had managed to escape the invasion of Paris, largely thanks to high-ranking friends pulling the right strings, and in Portugal a place was secured for them on the American trans-Atlantic ocean-liner the SS Excambion. The couple arrived in New York in August 1940 and were to remain in the United States for the next eight years. Living largely at the St. Regis Hotel in New York and the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach, California, they also spent considerable time at the homes of wealthy acquaintances. Early in the decade this included friend and patron Caresse Crosby’s plantation manse in Bowling Green, Virginia, where Dalí wrote his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. They also spent considerable time at the Franconia, New Hampshire home of the Marquis de Cuevas, and it was here that the artist penned his novel Hidden Faces.
Throughout the decade Dalí continued to “conquer” America with his eccentric personality and creative talents. He branched ever further from painting and writing into the graphic arts, ballet, the orchestration of extravagant parties and benefits, product and textile design, and magazine and book illustration. This even included working on film set designs for Alfred Hitchcock and a cartoon project with none other than Walt Disney. Although still very much considered a Surrealist in the public eye, while in exile Dalí could scarcely be farther in terms of politics, ethics and artistic direction from his former left-leaning peers. As they almost unanimously sympathized with the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, the exiled Paris Surrealists and their circle were incensed by rumours that Dalí had flirted with Spanish Fascism, and had converted to Catholicism, the authorized religion of Franco’s regime. Breton, who also found himself exiled in America, a country he clearly detested, was the most vocal of the group in his disgust of Dalí’s enthusiastic embrace of “New World” popular culture and capitalist ideology.[1]
Equally galling to Dalí’s former peers, who largely rejected tradition, hierarchical class structures and the fruits of colonialism, was how the Spanish artist had ingratiated himself with America’s wealthiest citizens, and brazenly flaunted his love of luxury and extravagance. “Dalí was now distanced even further from the Surrealists in exile,” Etherington-Smith explains, and notes that “at this point it is to be supposed that he did not much care.”[2] The artist, in fact, was profoundly determined in the early 1940s to distinguish himself from the Surrealist movement, which was losing its currency in the art world, and from modernism and abstraction in particular. His prime strategy was to stage an about face, executed via a solo exhibition which opened at the Julien Levy Gallery on April 22, 1941. The artist’s statement for the catalogue was entitled The Last Scandal of Salvador Dalí, and read like a manifesto. Translated by Levy, the premise was that it was written by a man named Felipe Jacinto, a friend of Dalí’s who, having recently encountered the Catalan, was privy to a declaration of his new artistic trajectory. Felipe and Jacinto being Dalí’s second and third names, it was an in-joke that the artist had penned the work himself.[3]
In this declaration Dalí pits himself against abstraction and automatism, and champions “form,” “classic” art, and the painterly traditions inspired by the Old Masters. “Dalí himself, I repeat, finds the unique attitude toward his destiny: TO BECOME CLASSIC!” he proclaims. “Behold the luck, the grace and the miracle that in this year of Spiritual Sterility 1941 there can still exist a being such as Dalí, capable of continuing the conquest of the irrational merely by becoming classic and pursuing that research in Divina Proportione interrupted since the Renaissance.” He then pronounces the modern era “Finished, finished, finished, a thousand times finished – the experimental epoch. . . . the epoch of improvised dramatic-lyrical blotches, of irresponsible spontaneous drawing, of two-cent philosophy disguising the technical and spiritual nothingness of the gratuitous, the shapeless and malformed.” Hammering home his point, he writes, “FORM, FORM, FORM,” followed by hundreds of terms roughly synonymous with this word.[4]
What exactly Dalí meant by “becoming classic” was a point of contention with the numerous art critics and reporters who reviewed this widely publicized exhibition. He did, however, explain to a New Yorker reporter that it meant “More design, balance, and precise technique,” qualified by Levy’s remark that Dalí was “trying to create a modern mythology.”[5] A writer for the Chicago Daily News wrote that “Salvador Dalí, ranking leader now of the ‘Surrealists,’ is ‘academic.’ I accused him of it in the big gallery at the Arts Club where his first Chicago exhibition is in progress, and failed to start an argument. For he agreed with a good-natured smile. Only he preferred the word ‘classic’ or the French equivalent thereof.”[6] Others were more skeptical, as was critic Henry McBride in an aptly entitled New York Sun article “The Classic Dalí: Not So Very Different from Dalí the Surrealist.” In it he writes that “Salvador Dalí has gone classical. Did you know that? So he says. But you’d never notice it. As far as you and I are concerned, it’s the same old Salvador.”[7]
Portrait of Lady Louis Mountbatten, circa 1939 (signed and dated 1940).
Oil on canvas, 63 x 52 cm (24.80” x 20.47”).
Private collection (Lady Pamela Hicks), London.
Oil on canvas, 63 x 52 cm (24.80” x 20.47”).
Private collection (Lady Pamela Hicks), London.
After its run in New York, Dalí’s “classic” show travelled to the Arts Club in Chicago opening on May 23, and ended its tour at the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in Los Angeles in the fall. The contents of the show changed somewhat as it moved venues, but in New York the exhibition contained a small number of portraits, including one of Gala, his famous Soft Self-portrait with Grilled Bacon, two finished society portraits and a third which was a preliminary sketch. There is little evidence of his new artistic philosophy in the first of these, his Portrait of Lady Louis Mountbatten, which Dalí had finished in Paris and delivered to the English subject just before escaping the occupation. This canvas had made its way over the Atlantic with Lady Mountbatten, who worked devotedly with the Red Cross during WWII.[8] The unfinished sketch was of Don Juan Cárdenas, Franco’s Ambassador in America, and was a working drawing for an oil portrait the artist executed a few years later.
The last society portrait in the show was the first that Dalí was to finish in the U.S. in the 1940s, and was a work known today as Portrait of Mrs. George Tait II. This peculiar painting also has little that would mark it as “classic,” other than its visual literalness, its having been executed in the traditional oil, and that the subject sits upon what looks like a Corinthian column. The sitter would be typical of one strain of client Dalí painted in America: the simple, homegrown wife of a blustery American millionaire who sought the conspicuous trappings of wealth and title, including a portrait of his spouse painted by a famous European artist.
The last society portrait in the show was the first that Dalí was to finish in the U.S. in the 1940s, and was a work known today as Portrait of Mrs. George Tait II. This peculiar painting also has little that would mark it as “classic,” other than its visual literalness, its having been executed in the traditional oil, and that the subject sits upon what looks like a Corinthian column. The sitter would be typical of one strain of client Dalí painted in America: the simple, homegrown wife of a blustery American millionaire who sought the conspicuous trappings of wealth and title, including a portrait of his spouse painted by a famous European artist.
Portrait of Mrs. George Tait II (Mrs. Harold McCormick), 1941.
Oil on unknown support, unknown measures.
Unsigned and undated, location unknown.
Oil on unknown support, unknown measures.
Unsigned and undated, location unknown.
The subject was known at that time as Adah McCormick, née Wilson, circa 1904, and was from the very small U.S. town of Shoshone, Idaho. Adah was a trained nurse, and worked privately for the platinum-haired screen siren Jean Harlow for years, until the actress’s untimely death in 1937. As a nurse for Harlow, Adah attended a party where she met Chicago multi-millionaire Harold Fowler McCormick, chairman of the board of the International Harvester Company.[9] A known womanizer, McCormick was romantically linked with a number of famous and beautiful women, including opera singer Mary Garden and actress Pola Negri.[10] He had also been through two high profile marriages: one to Edith Rockefeller, daughter of John D. Rockefeller, and the aspiring, and notoriously untalented Polish-born opera singer Ganna Walska. McCormick spent millions trying to launch the warbling diva’s career despite her apparent lack of musical gifts. It was this dogged determination to make his wife a star that provided inspiration for a similar storyline in Orson Welles’ famous 1941 film, Citizen Kane.[11]
By the later 1930s, Adah and McCormick had struck up an acquaintance, with McCormick sending for Adah when he required a nurse. This included a bout of tonsillitis, another of arthritis, and finally, a heart attack. A romance soon blossomed and the two were married in 1938, when Adah was 34 and Harold was 66. Their wedding was held at McCormick’s sister’s Pasadena mansion, and there was so much interest in the union that during the ceremony, the estate had to be guarded by sixty watchmen.[12] The two were by all reports happily married until McCormick died of a second heart attack, the year Dalí’s portrait was painted. McCormick left his widow three million dollars (about fifty million in today’s currency), and Adah remarried the following year, this time to former aircraft engineer George Tait II, a man six years her junior. The couple had a son, Wilson, but it was evidently a troubled union, as she was to divorce him in 1948 for what was described as “extreme cruelty.”[13]
Permission pending.
Study for “Portrait of Mrs. George Tait, II,” 1941.
Pencil on paper, 37x30.5 cm.
Private collection.
Pencil on paper, 37x30.5 cm.
Private collection.
It is not recorded how the portrait commission came about, although likely Dalí encountered the subject and her husband during a trip to California, as the McCormicks held a residence at 1000 North Crescent Drive, in Beverly Hills. Dalí began to work from photographs before his subject sat for him in person, and hence it is possible the painting, as well as the extant preparatory sketch, were done primarily from this source. In a letter dated November 15th, 1940, held at the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archives, Harold McCormick writes to Dalí that "We are so happy to feel that you have begun work on Mrs. McCormick’s portrait and that you feel contented with the beginning of this work. I am particularly grateful that you have found already a sympathetic feeling which led you to an early beginning . . . I am sending you some photographs of Mrs. McCormick which I hope will give you definite aspects of her nature, characteristics and personality, and I am sure they in the main speak for themselves."[14]
In his letter to Dalí, McCormick clearly wished to endorse his new bride’s virtues, writing “I can only feel that there must be something in the life and work and character of my lovely wife who dedicated her services for so many years to that area and consecration of nursing under the tradition established by Florence Nightingale whose lamp has always been a symbol of this devoted and consecrated profession.”[15] McCormick also discusses the Dalís’ impending visit, when they were to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was there the artist was to complete the portrait, in keeping with his lifelong habit of turning his hotel rooms into temporary studios. The Dalís’ arrival, on January 20th, 1941, was recorded by the newspapers with suitable pomp and circumstance.
Colour photograph of Portrait of Mrs. George Tait, II
(Mrs. Harold McCormick), 1941. As published in Town and Country, 1941
(Mrs. Harold McCormick), 1941. As published in Town and Country, 1941
As might be expected regarding a small-town nurse who married one of America’s wealthiest men, twice her age, who was famous for his relationships with several very prominent women, the press had much to say about the third Mrs. McCormick. The former nurse was largely portrayed in the media as a guileless naïf, while more pointed accounts suggested she “snagged” her wealthy husband, inspiring such epithets as “a demure little trick in a starched uniform,” “saucy nurse” and “inconspicuous but irresistible Cinderella who wins the prince.”[16] Dalí, of course, had his own views on the matter which, as with most of his portraits, are implied in the iconography of the piece. Also not unusual for many of Dalí’s society portraits, he makes little attempt to flatter his subject. Comparing the delicate preparatory sketch he made for the portrait with the finished oil, it seems Dalí transformed a very fresh and lovely woman with large, dreamy eyes and Mona Lisa smile into a mousy, cartoonish and rather droopy-eyed waif. One commentator was later to write about Dalí’s tendency to age his sitters, noting that in this case “the face was far heavier than that of the girl the late Harold McCormick married for his third wife.”[17]
According to McCormick’s letter, the couple had preferences about what Adah might wear in the portrait. “Mrs. McCormick has an idea that she would like to be painted in a décolleté gown,” her husband notes. I know of a very pretty bedroom wrapper which she wears which is most becoming and is in nattier shades, but I presume you will want to judge of what costume Mrs. McCormick wears after looking over what she has.”[18] Despite these suggestions, Dalí decided to paint what can be seen of Mrs. McCormick sporting a gauzy wrap, loosely-tied over her shoulder like a bandage. This choice, unique in Dalí’s portraiture, may well reference the subject’s former profession. In Adah’s gently windswept hair, he placed a sprig of spiky green leaves, looking very much like holly. Often employing the language of flowers in his portraiture, he was perhaps referencing Hollywood, where Adah was known as the “Hollywood Nurse.”
While such touches add whimsy to the canvas, it is the artist’s use of proportion, and the pedestal upon which Adah's"bust" sits, which most reveals Dalí’s view of her character and social standing. Most notable is the extent to which she has been dwarfed by her surroundings. The Idaho native appears diminutive in relation to the sweeping and dramatic background behind her, much as this simple small-town girl had found herself in the glittering world of millionaires and movie stars. Also notable, in contrast to her alleged natural simplicity and self-conscious mien, is the opulence and seeming anthropomorphism of the pedestal upon which she sits. The plinth is, in fact, so large that considering its blood red slab-like surface — it reads less as a pedestal than an altar presenting Adah as an offering.
The Corinthian pedestal itself is most striking, and clearly a place where Dalí chose to deploy both his Surrealist and “classic” tendencies. More or less where Adah’s stomach would be, he has placed a cave-like hole inside of which struts one of the centaurs common to his work of the period. In Dalí’s “classic” show at the Julien Levy gallery, for example, he showed Family of Marsupial Centaurs (1940), a work described as celebrating birth and motherhood. Butting up against this womb-like space in the portrait are six animated bone-like objects that are so phallic, it seems impossible not to view them as attempting to gain access to the orifice above. In sum, Dalí has portrayed this Hollywood nurse as a sacrificial lamb, or as a vessel, whose main purpose was for sex and reproduction. Considering this amusingly blunt and risqué portrayal, one wonders how the conservative McCormicks received the quirky canvas. Evidence suggests they were suitably pleased, as the bill for $3,000 was promptly dispatched as of February 3rd, 1941, barely two weeks after the Dalís arrival in Beverley Hills, and of course the McCormicks allowed it to be shown in Dalí’s 1941 “classic” exhibition at the Levy gallery.[19]
As the McCormicks enjoyed a considerable amount of celebrity, there was much speculation about the portrait before it was unveiled. Society reporter for The Chicago Herald-American Helen Young wrote that “Just about the last artist in the world we’d expect Harold McCormick to commission to do a portrait of his pretty, reserved little wife would be the surrealist, Salvador Dalí. But the fact that he DID,” she continues, “. . . is causing no end of speculation as to how Dalí has pictured the lady.”[20] When the show opened, however, Portrait of Mrs. Harold McCormick was overshadowed in the press by the numerous other works which were, by the standards of the day, immensely intriguing, and it received small mention in reviews. After that Portrait of Mrs. Harold McCormick, later changed to Portrait of Mrs. George Tait II to reflect the subject’s second marriage, was displayed in the family home, from where it was stolen in 1972.[21] Never recovered, its current whereabouts are unknown, although photographs of the work have fortunately survived.
Despite the quiet reception the portrait received at the Julien Levy gallery exhibition, further commissions poured in to Dalí, some of them from America’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens. As reported by Fleur Cowles, at this time “Dalí invaded and conquered the portrait field of the fashionable. Getting the internationally famous people to pose for him brought three most desirable rewards: wealth, publicity, and a permanent place in The Set.”[22] As a result, in the next year alone he painted five society portraits — this, in addition to his many other projects, and despite the fact that at this point, he was still very dedicated to a highly time-consuming academic technique.
Portrait of Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, 1941.
As currently shown in the Lasker Foundation.
Courtesy of The Lasker Foundation.
As currently shown in the Lasker Foundation.
Courtesy of The Lasker Foundation.
Not all Dalí’s portraits were painted, however, and he did offer clients the option of a drawing, for which he charged considerably less than an oil. One of these was a rather informal sketch of Mary Woodward Lasker, the third wife of American businessman Albert D. Lasker. An immensely wealthy communications innovator, Albert Lasker’s pioneering efforts won him the epithet of the “father of modern advertising.” Mary, his third wife, was herself an equally strong and determined character, and also made a mark on the world, becoming a driving force in the field of medical research and disease prevention.
Mary Woodward (1900–1994), the future Mrs. Lasker, was born in Watertown, Wisconsin. She studied art history at college, and worked in the art world when she married her first husband, gallery-owner Paul Reinhardt. Following their divorce, Mary began a successful dress pattern making company.[23] Raised in a family concerned with civic issues, she also embraced health activism, beginning with birth control advocacy in the late 1930s. Once married to Lasker, she put her newfound wealth and influence to work for the greater good, and became further active promoting health awareness and with various philanthropic endeavours. Most notably, she was highly instrumental in helping to build the American Cancer Society, and she and Albert founded the Lasker Foundation, a funding body whose mandate is to “improve health by accelerating support for medical research through recognition of research excellence, public education and advocacy.”[24] Today the Lasker Award, which recognizes the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants who have made significant contributions to biomedical research, is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the United States. Lasker herself also won many awards for her tireless work in promoting health issues, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. A U.S. postage stamp featuring her likeness was released in 2009.[25]
Mary Woodward (1900–1994), the future Mrs. Lasker, was born in Watertown, Wisconsin. She studied art history at college, and worked in the art world when she married her first husband, gallery-owner Paul Reinhardt. Following their divorce, Mary began a successful dress pattern making company.[23] Raised in a family concerned with civic issues, she also embraced health activism, beginning with birth control advocacy in the late 1930s. Once married to Lasker, she put her newfound wealth and influence to work for the greater good, and became further active promoting health awareness and with various philanthropic endeavours. Most notably, she was highly instrumental in helping to build the American Cancer Society, and she and Albert founded the Lasker Foundation, a funding body whose mandate is to “improve health by accelerating support for medical research through recognition of research excellence, public education and advocacy.”[24] Today the Lasker Award, which recognizes the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants who have made significant contributions to biomedical research, is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the United States. Lasker herself also won many awards for her tireless work in promoting health issues, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. A U.S. postage stamp featuring her likeness was released in 2009.[25]
2009 United States Postal Service stamp honouring Mary Lasker.
Dalí did not produce many drafted portrait during his career, and Portrait of Mrs. Albert D. Lasker was one of only a handful done in this technique. While the bulk of his portraits were highly staged affairs — sometimes artificial and stiff to the point of absurdity — this work is notable for its natural aspect. Mrs. Lasker appears relaxed and as if she is engaged in comfortable conversation with the artist. Indeed, surviving letters in both the Dalí and the Lasker archives reveal that the two became friends, keeping up a lively correspondence for many years, and documenting several other Lasker commissions from the artist.[26]
Dalí sketching Mary Lasker in 1941.
Photographer unknown.
Photographer unknown.
Around the time she was sketched, Mary was described as being a striking woman with “piercing eyes set deeply into a wide face, a dramatic head of wavy brown hair, and a broad grin.”[27] The artist has certainly captured these aspects of her character, and showcases his drafting skills in the limning of Mary's face and hands. Oddly, Dalí has added a single dab of red in the work, on the subject’s lips, a rather surreal touch that brings to mind the famous ruby and pearl Ruby Lips brooch he produced in collaboration with the jeweler Carlos Alemany in 1949. The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation was founded a year after the portrait was executed and today Portrait of Mrs. Albert D. Lasker hangs in the conference room at the Foundation headquarters in New York City.
Melancholy: Portrait of Singer Claire Dux (Mrs. Charles Swift), 1942.
Oil on canvas, 1942, 80 x 60 cm (31.50" x 23.62").
Private collection (as of 2006).
Oil on canvas, 1942, 80 x 60 cm (31.50" x 23.62").
Private collection (as of 2006).
One of the many painted commissions Dalí finished in 1942 was of Mrs. Charles H. Swift, formerly known as the opera and concert soprano Claire Dux (1885 – 1967). Dux was born in Poland to parents who are thought to be of Swiss or German heritage. She began singing professionally at the age of twelve, and continued to work successfully with various companies throughout Western Europe until she came to America to perform with the Chicago Civic Opera in 1921. The Lewiston Evening Journal described her, in a glowing 1922 review, as “one of the great personages in the operatic and concert fields.”[28]
Dux married three times. Her first husband was the writer Wilhelm Alfred Imperatori, and her second, the German actor Hans Albers. Once in America, she was reportedly looking to find a millionaire to make husband number three, which she efficiently accomplished in her first year in Chicago. In a tour of a Swift meat-packing company stockyard, according to Dux, she and company owner Charles Henry Swift fell in love at first sight. While not the most romantic locale for romance to blossom, it was indeed a fortunate coincidence for the singer as Swift, a multi-millionaire, was one of the richest men in Chicago. He was also an avid patron of the arts, and had supported the Chicago symphony for many years. The two wed in August of 1926, at which time the new Mrs. Charles Henry Swift, then forty-one, reluctantly retired from the stage.[29] Perhaps this disinclination to leave her career is why Dalí prefixed the title of her portrait “Melancholy.”
Mrs. Swift did not forget her vocation, however, and neither did Dalí, who pays homage in his “Portrait of Singer Claire Dux,” rather than that of “Mrs. Charles Swift.” In keeping with his “classic” approach, here he has aptly chosen to depict Dux as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, a popular subject for academic painters. That he was thinking in these terms comes to light in his novel Hidden Faces, which he was likely working on about the time he was rendering Dux’s likeness. In one of the scenes he writes of one of the main characters, Bekta, that "A faint music was softly wafted from the Countess’s room, and one could easily have imagined that instead of a girl at her toilet Betka had become a Saint Cecilia playing her golden organ, seated on a cloud, so weakened did she feel, so disembodied and as if helped up by the absence of weight which the almost absolute unconsciousness of her own movement imparted on her."[30]
For the scenario, Dalí has chosen the attributes typical of depictions of St. Cecilia, as for instance in Jacques Blanchard’s Baroque rendition of her in the Hermitage. Mrs. Swift, in a white wrap, sits at what was described in period reviews as an ancient clavecin, or harpsichord, which she is presumably playing, although her hands and the keyboard are not visible. Curled in front of her is a scroll-like object likely meant to represent the sheet music from which she is reading, and may be a reference to an original manuscript of Mozart’s Conservati fedele, of which the Swifts were proud owners.[31] Around her in the air are several airborne putti, intended to convey the spirit of music; one perches upon a cloud strumming a lute, while another blows a trumpet behind a small column rising up from the harpsichord. Despite these Baroque touches, that this is still a work by Dalí is made clear by his trademark Cadaqués-inspired landscape, in the back of which floats a stylized archway of clouds that frames the scene.
Dux married three times. Her first husband was the writer Wilhelm Alfred Imperatori, and her second, the German actor Hans Albers. Once in America, she was reportedly looking to find a millionaire to make husband number three, which she efficiently accomplished in her first year in Chicago. In a tour of a Swift meat-packing company stockyard, according to Dux, she and company owner Charles Henry Swift fell in love at first sight. While not the most romantic locale for romance to blossom, it was indeed a fortunate coincidence for the singer as Swift, a multi-millionaire, was one of the richest men in Chicago. He was also an avid patron of the arts, and had supported the Chicago symphony for many years. The two wed in August of 1926, at which time the new Mrs. Charles Henry Swift, then forty-one, reluctantly retired from the stage.[29] Perhaps this disinclination to leave her career is why Dalí prefixed the title of her portrait “Melancholy.”
Mrs. Swift did not forget her vocation, however, and neither did Dalí, who pays homage in his “Portrait of Singer Claire Dux,” rather than that of “Mrs. Charles Swift.” In keeping with his “classic” approach, here he has aptly chosen to depict Dux as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, a popular subject for academic painters. That he was thinking in these terms comes to light in his novel Hidden Faces, which he was likely working on about the time he was rendering Dux’s likeness. In one of the scenes he writes of one of the main characters, Bekta, that "A faint music was softly wafted from the Countess’s room, and one could easily have imagined that instead of a girl at her toilet Betka had become a Saint Cecilia playing her golden organ, seated on a cloud, so weakened did she feel, so disembodied and as if helped up by the absence of weight which the almost absolute unconsciousness of her own movement imparted on her."[30]
For the scenario, Dalí has chosen the attributes typical of depictions of St. Cecilia, as for instance in Jacques Blanchard’s Baroque rendition of her in the Hermitage. Mrs. Swift, in a white wrap, sits at what was described in period reviews as an ancient clavecin, or harpsichord, which she is presumably playing, although her hands and the keyboard are not visible. Curled in front of her is a scroll-like object likely meant to represent the sheet music from which she is reading, and may be a reference to an original manuscript of Mozart’s Conservati fedele, of which the Swifts were proud owners.[31] Around her in the air are several airborne putti, intended to convey the spirit of music; one perches upon a cloud strumming a lute, while another blows a trumpet behind a small column rising up from the harpsichord. Despite these Baroque touches, that this is still a work by Dalí is made clear by his trademark Cadaqués-inspired landscape, in the back of which floats a stylized archway of clouds that frames the scene.
Jacques Blanchard, Saint Cecilia.
First half of 17th Century, oil on canvas.
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
First half of 17th Century, oil on canvas.
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The bottom half of the canvas, including Dux’s skin, has been rendered in sepia tones, the colour of old photographs. This was likely a carry-over from the sepia-toned publicity photograph of the singer that Dalí used as a model for the work. Taken in the early 1930's, the photo depicts Dux when she as in her mid-forties. When Dalí painted Melancholy: Portrait of Singer Claire Dux, the subject was actually fifty-seven years old, and evidently his aim was to present a nostalgic rendering of Dux at the height of her beauty and fame, and more of a romantic fantasy than a conventional portrait.
Claire Dux publicity photograph, circa 1931.
Knowing Dalí was aiming for “classic” realism, his very literal translation of the photograph of Dux reveals much about his working method, and difficulty with, or perhaps disinclination for, smoothly integrating photographic images with his fantasy scenarios. Despite an attempt at animating the copied image of Dux by placing it on an angle, the figure appears stilted and awkward in the painting. Indeed, when the work was shown at Dalí's first portrait exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery in 1943, it was singled out by the critics for this very reason. Newsweek described Mrs. Swift as “peering” from behind her instrument, and no doubt this was what social columnist Elsa Maxwell meant in her Times-Herald review about Dalí's subjects having “blank faces,” and lacking in “animation, personality, or thought.” She was most offended, however, by the sentimental addition of the airborne musicians in Melancholy: Portrait of Singer Claire Dux, which she described as “dreadful, little oversexed cupids.”[32]
Portrait of Mrs. Ortíz-Liñares, 1942.
Oil on canvas, 78 x 63 cm (30.71” x 24.80”). Private collection.
Oil on canvas, 78 x 63 cm (30.71” x 24.80”). Private collection.
A second portrait Dalí completed in 1942 full of “oversexed cupids” was that of the elegant and immensely wealthy wife of Bolivian man of affairs, Jorge Ortíz Liñares. Born Graziella Patiño Rodríguez (c. 1895 - 1980) in Oruro, Bolivia, she was the daughter of Simón I. Patiño and Albina Rodríguez Ocampo. Her father was known as the “Andean Rockefeller” and “Bolivia’s Tin King”; epithets he earned having risen from rags to riches in South America in the highly lucrative tin industry. While listed as one of the world's richest men in the 1940s, after the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, the mines owned by the Ortiz family were nationalized and the land was confiscated.[33]
One of five children, Graziella was raised in Madrid and Paris, and in 1926 she married Jorge Ortíz Liñares, a Bolivian diplomat of aristocratic Spanish descent. Together they had two sons, Jaime and George. Described by one observer as “cultivated socialites,” they settled in Paris at the gracious Avenue Foch, and their home was sumptuously furnished with eighteenth century antiques, and paintings by the likes of Watteau and Fragonard.[34] Graziella became one of the pre-eminent silver collectors of her time, and among her acquisitions were some of the most rare and beautiful works in the genre. Her husband collected precious French books and manuscripts, and not surprisingly, their son George also became a celebrated collector, amassing one of the finest collections of antiquities in private hands.[35]
During the Second World War, the Ortíz Liñares family relocated to New York which is where they may have first encountered the Dalís. That the couple spoke Spanish, and ran in high circles — not to mention their immense wealth — suggests that they would have been prime candidates for Gala and Dalí who, in the early 1940s, were actively seeking commissions from well-heeled socialites. They also held a common acquaintance in Franco’s Ambassador in America, Don Juan Cárdenas, whom Dalí painted in 1943, and Jorge was himself appointed Bolivian Ambassador to France after the war.
One of five children, Graziella was raised in Madrid and Paris, and in 1926 she married Jorge Ortíz Liñares, a Bolivian diplomat of aristocratic Spanish descent. Together they had two sons, Jaime and George. Described by one observer as “cultivated socialites,” they settled in Paris at the gracious Avenue Foch, and their home was sumptuously furnished with eighteenth century antiques, and paintings by the likes of Watteau and Fragonard.[34] Graziella became one of the pre-eminent silver collectors of her time, and among her acquisitions were some of the most rare and beautiful works in the genre. Her husband collected precious French books and manuscripts, and not surprisingly, their son George also became a celebrated collector, amassing one of the finest collections of antiquities in private hands.[35]
During the Second World War, the Ortíz Liñares family relocated to New York which is where they may have first encountered the Dalís. That the couple spoke Spanish, and ran in high circles — not to mention their immense wealth — suggests that they would have been prime candidates for Gala and Dalí who, in the early 1940s, were actively seeking commissions from well-heeled socialites. They also held a common acquaintance in Franco’s Ambassador in America, Don Juan Cárdenas, whom Dalí painted in 1943, and Jorge was himself appointed Bolivian Ambassador to France after the war.
Nicola Vaccaro, The Madonna and Child Attended by Putti in the Heavens.
Late 17th, early 18th century. Oil on copper.
Late 17th, early 18th century. Oil on copper.
An apologetic letter to Graziella from Dalí written in Spanish in May 1942 reveals the artist was behind schedule in delivery of the portrait, and offers a glimpse into his harried schedule: “I deliberately stayed very alone in New York for twelve days to finish the painting, which now only should take a week to complete,” he writes. "I hope to return to New York in the end of May to finish it. Do not worry — I am making grand discoveries… Because of these newly acquired experiences and all of this delay it has enabled me to give the painting its last finishing touches – when this sublime artistic inspiration arrives, it can never come too late. Anyways given this, I apologise a thousand times. […] I will send the painting to you straight away." The letter also reflects the enthusiasm and grand vision the artist holds for the current stage of his career. “To synthesize the third stage of this trilogy — which has left me suspended in the eighteenth century,” he writes. “Sadism, Masochism, and now Idealism.”[36]
Dalís’ references to the eighteenth century evidently inform his choice of portrayal for Portrait of Mrs. Ortíz Liñares. The work exemplifies Dalí’s “classic” phase, and references Baroque clichés of rendering the Madonna in the clouds with angels and putti. The work does not, however, exude the heavenly airiness that this convention dictates, and here the putti are evidently labouring to hold the lady afloat on what appears to be a profoundly heavy cloud. More thick clouds billow behind Graziella although Dalí’s habitual Catalan landscape, populated by a few buildings and trees, is visible behind her right shoulder. A windswept female figure holding a small child by the hand traverses the terrain, lending by contrast a grand sense of scale to the airborne socialite.
For the work, the artist has chosen a soft palette of beige, grey and ivory, punctuated by the dark blue of the sea, and the dark veil and décolleté gown the sitter dons. The veil may be a nod to Graziella’s Spanish connections, as it vaguely resembles the traditional black lace mantilla headdress worn by Spanish women. More likely, it was meant to give Graziella a more Madonna-like appearance, which seems appropriate as during the war she worked at the “sacred profession” of nursing at a New York hospital in order to relieve the shortage of regular staff.[37]
Dalí portrays Graziella in a pyramidal configuration that lends heft to her commanding presence. Like Mrs. McCormick, however, the artist does little to flatter this woman, who was then in her mid-forties. Comparing the portrait to a photograph of Mrs. Ortíz Liñares taken around the same time, it is clear that she was decidedly more youthful than the artist’s portrayal, and possessed soft attractive features rather than the slightly hard and matronly ones depicted. Columnist “Cousin Eve” certainly thought so when writing about the work in the Chicago Tribune the year after it was completed. “I spent some weeks in daily contact with Mme. Ortiz,” she writes. “I never recognized Dalí’s portrait of her. It is of the pretty Peruvian [sic] as she will look some years from now.”[38]
Permission pending.
Original painting in 1943, before the addition of lace at the bust line.
Photograph of Mrs. Ortíz Liñares, early 1940s.
Evidently, the “pretty Peruvian” and her husband were satisfied enough with the work to allow it to be shown in Dalí’s Knoedler Gallery exhibition in 1943. That said, since that time, a slight alteration was made to the canvas. In the photograph of the work that appears in catalogue for the show, Graziella’s garment demonstrates a low, straight line across the bust. However, in later exhibition photographs, a panel of lace has been placed as an edging along the bust line of the dress, presumably to render the garment less revealing. When the alteration was requested, and by whom, is not known, nor is it known if it was Dalí who carried it out.
Salvador Dalí shows his portraits at Knoedler Gallery. The woman next to him is likely Mrs. Liñares.
Photograph by Ralph Crane, 1943.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
Photograph by Ralph Crane, 1943.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
Portrait of Dorothy Spreckels Munn (Venus Enthroned on a Dolphin), 1942.
Oil on canvas, 78.75 x 63.8 cm; 31 x 25 1/8 in.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Mrs. Charles A. Munn.
Oil on canvas, 78.75 x 63.8 cm; 31 x 25 1/8 in.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Mrs. Charles A. Munn.
Dalí’s next subject was less concerned with covering up, and as a result, his aquatic portrait of heiress and socialite Dorothy Spreckels McCarthy, later Munn (1913-2000), was to cause a few waves. Known as California’s “Sugar Princess,” Dorothy was born in San Francisco into an immensely wealthy family in the sugar business. Her grandfather Claus Spreckels had been the founder of the Spreckels Sugar Company, and her father was the sugar magnate Adolf Spreckels. Dorothy’s mother was the formidable Alma Spreckels known as “Big Alma,” a woman who, thanks to her grand philanthropy, has since been dubbed “the Great Grandmother of San Francisco.” A socialite, philanthropist and patron of the arts, among other notable projects, she founded and funded San Francisco’s fine arts museum, the Legion of Honor. Based on the extravagant eighteenth century Palais de la Légion d’honneur in Paris, it is here that Dalí’s portrait of her daughter now hangs. Dorothy was also a lover of the arts, and lived in Paris for many years, where she was active in the restoration of both Versailles and Giverny.[39]
Described as a “blonde of beautiful coloring and features and slender figure,” Dorothy was married three times.[40] Her first husband was French millionaire Jean Dupuy, a sportsman and member of a family prominent in the publishing business. Her third husband was Charles Munn, whose family was linked by marriage to the Pulitzers, Armours, Vanderbilts, Amorys and many other wealthy families. At the time the portrait was painted, Dorothy had recently wed her second husband, oil salesman Andy McCarthy, and was carrying his child.
Described as a “blonde of beautiful coloring and features and slender figure,” Dorothy was married three times.[40] Her first husband was French millionaire Jean Dupuy, a sportsman and member of a family prominent in the publishing business. Her third husband was Charles Munn, whose family was linked by marriage to the Pulitzers, Armours, Vanderbilts, Amorys and many other wealthy families. At the time the portrait was painted, Dorothy had recently wed her second husband, oil salesman Andy McCarthy, and was carrying his child.
Dalí and Dorothy at the Hotel Del Monte, 1941.
Photographer unknown.
Photographer unknown.
Looking for a place for the couple to live, Dorothy had purchased a sprawling mansion on twenty acres of waterfront property in a tony community on the Burlingame Peninsula, near San Francisco. Designed by Lewis Hobart, and built in 1913, it was dubbed La Dolphine. This acquisition caused quite a sensation as Dorothy had attained the property for a remarkably low sum, the reason being its association with a series of untimely deaths, and hence a general belief that it was “jinxed.” It was here that Dalí and Gala had been installed as guests for several weeks in early 1942, for the purpose of painting Dorothy’s portrait. According to the scandal sheets of the day, this residency seems to have been the catalyst for the heiress’s husband to pack in their marriage, and he promptly went off to live with none other than Dorothy’s mother Big Alma.[41]
All this unorthodox activity meant that the portrait became the centre of a media frenzy. No one could get enough of the irresistible combination of a beautiful, expectant heiress, abruptly abandoned by her latest husband, and her unlucky mansion housing a celebrated and eccentric Surrealist and his wife. It helped, too, that the portrait was sufficiently racy, revealing not a little of the Sugar Princess’s comely flesh. Newspapers reported all sorts of scandals and sidelines, such as the one encapsulated in the headline for a full-page spread in the American Weekly of April 5th, 1942, which read “Fled from His Wife Back Home to His Mother-in-Law! Sugar Heiress Spreckels’ Husband Was Disturbed When She Bought That Hoodoo Honeymoon Nest, But when Surrealist Dalí Did His Masterpiece of Dorothy and the Dolphin, Andrew Didn’t Want to Live There Any More.”[42] While all this may have been more or less true, some papers also suggested that Dalí and “Dot” were romantically entwined. This was, however, an unlikely prospect under the watchful eye of Gala, whose gaze had famously been described capable of piercing walls.
Dalí did choose a particularly sensuous theme for his portrait, based on the academic cliché of Venus and the sea. Contemporary press report that the subtitle of the work was Venus Enthroned on a Dolphin, the dolphin being particularly a propos, considering the pseudo-French moniker for Dorothy's “hoodoo mansion,” La Dolphine. American Weekly reported that those who knew the heiress believed that “by enthroning Dotty on a dolphin, representative of ‘La Dolphine,’ the artist is supposed to show that this subject is far and above silly superstition and defiantly mistress of her own destiny.”[43]
Dalí did indeed make this lady master of the monster-like dolphin upon which she sits, languorously holding a thin gold leash attached to the beast’s ferocious upper jaw. The dolphin little resembles the actual sea-mammal, however, as the artist invoked a fanciful Renaissance rendition of the creature for the painting. Both style and subject directly reflect Dalí’s attempts to go “classic,” as Venus rising from the sea upon a dolphin was a popular subject with early Italian artists. Notably, the very San Francisco Legion of Honor has several examples of prints featuring this subject, including a particularly fine etching by sixteenth century Italian Renaissance printmaker Agostino Veneziano, after Raphael.
All this unorthodox activity meant that the portrait became the centre of a media frenzy. No one could get enough of the irresistible combination of a beautiful, expectant heiress, abruptly abandoned by her latest husband, and her unlucky mansion housing a celebrated and eccentric Surrealist and his wife. It helped, too, that the portrait was sufficiently racy, revealing not a little of the Sugar Princess’s comely flesh. Newspapers reported all sorts of scandals and sidelines, such as the one encapsulated in the headline for a full-page spread in the American Weekly of April 5th, 1942, which read “Fled from His Wife Back Home to His Mother-in-Law! Sugar Heiress Spreckels’ Husband Was Disturbed When She Bought That Hoodoo Honeymoon Nest, But when Surrealist Dalí Did His Masterpiece of Dorothy and the Dolphin, Andrew Didn’t Want to Live There Any More.”[42] While all this may have been more or less true, some papers also suggested that Dalí and “Dot” were romantically entwined. This was, however, an unlikely prospect under the watchful eye of Gala, whose gaze had famously been described capable of piercing walls.
Dalí did choose a particularly sensuous theme for his portrait, based on the academic cliché of Venus and the sea. Contemporary press report that the subtitle of the work was Venus Enthroned on a Dolphin, the dolphin being particularly a propos, considering the pseudo-French moniker for Dorothy's “hoodoo mansion,” La Dolphine. American Weekly reported that those who knew the heiress believed that “by enthroning Dotty on a dolphin, representative of ‘La Dolphine,’ the artist is supposed to show that this subject is far and above silly superstition and defiantly mistress of her own destiny.”[43]
Dalí did indeed make this lady master of the monster-like dolphin upon which she sits, languorously holding a thin gold leash attached to the beast’s ferocious upper jaw. The dolphin little resembles the actual sea-mammal, however, as the artist invoked a fanciful Renaissance rendition of the creature for the painting. Both style and subject directly reflect Dalí’s attempts to go “classic,” as Venus rising from the sea upon a dolphin was a popular subject with early Italian artists. Notably, the very San Francisco Legion of Honor has several examples of prints featuring this subject, including a particularly fine etching by sixteenth century Italian Renaissance printmaker Agostino Veneziano, after Raphael.
Venus Reclining on a Dolphin, after Raphael, early 16th century.
Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano) (engraver), after Raffaello Sanzio.
Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano) (engraver), after Raffaello Sanzio.
While Dalí's work is evidently an ode to Dorothy’s beauty, critics of the time saw it as decidedly kitsch, describing what was then entitled Portrait of Dorothy Spreckels McCarthy, as emitting “an air of sweet vapidity.”[44] “One has an idea” wrote an Art Digest commentator known only as H.B., that “Dalí must have had his tongue tucked in his cheek.” H.B. goes on to describe “the overly sweet portrayal of Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels . . . for in this Dalí has pictured a winsome lass in as saccharine a manner as remembered from early candy box lids.” Nevertheless, in reference to the Renaissance-inspired cavaliers and white horses frolicking in the waves, H.B. continues that it has been “saved from the obvious and lifted to more intellectual planes by a number of horror items scattered conveniently around.”[45] Despite such reservations, Dorothy, herself was quoted saying she was “well pleased” with the work, which would have cost her $5,000 at Dalí’s going rate.[46] “He asked me what I liked and I said the sea, so he put a little bit of the sea into it,” she stated. “There’s no hidden meaning. It’s just me.”[47]
Portrait of Mrs. Luther Greene, 1942.
Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm (24.02” x 20.08”).
Private collection.
Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm (24.02” x 20.08”).
Private collection.
Permission pending.
Portrait of Mrs. Luther Greene, in colour.
Source unknown.
Source unknown.
Another portrait of the early 1940s featuring an expectant mother was that of the wife of Broadway producer Luther Greene. The subject was born Ellen Chamberlain (1916 - 1989) in San Francisco, and was the daughter of Selah Chamberlain and Edith McDonald, both from influential California families. While Ellen was born into a “blue blood” milieu, much to her mother’s chagrin she decided to become an actress, and enrolled at the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York to pursue a career in theatre. Moving in artistic circles she soon met Luther Greene, a director and producer working in New York at that time.[48] They married in 1940 and had two children: son Luther, and daughter Ellen, with whom Dalí’s subject was pregnant when the portrait was painted.[49]
Luther was a colourful and flamboyant character who, after a very successful career in theatre, became a celebrated designer of country and rooftop gardens. An apartment he lived in on East 58th Street in New York, which featured a crimson bedroom and a grotto made of 12,000 seashells, became a local curiosity. Luther Greene was a good friend of Dalí, who produced some lively drawings for him based on the letters of his and Ellen’s names. Their daughter retains monogrammed jewellery and door handles made from these, which were used for their Santa Monica home. Greene also provided interior decorating suggestions to the Dalís, as in a letter in the archives, dated January 27, 1943, from Luther, written in French from “Ellen et moi,” includes designs for interior decoration, possibly for the Dalís’ residence at the Del Monte Lodge.[50]
Permission pending.
Drawing by Salvador Dalí, based on Luther and Ellen Greene's name.
Luther had the letter "G" carved in cowrie shells, and gave them to selected visitors.
Luther had the letter "G" carved in cowrie shells, and gave them to selected visitors.
In addition to the portrait of Ellen, Dalí also produced a preliminary portrait drawing of Luther, whom he apparently depicted riding nude on horseback. His daughter recalls her father refused to sit for such a daring portrayal, which is why it was never completed. She also remembers that Dalí refused to have his picture taken with her, by celebrity photographer Jerome Zerbe, unless he was allowed to wield a dagger. The couple divorced in 1945, and in 1946 Ellen married lawyer Joseph Martin. Jr., with whom she moved to San Francisco.[51] Luther, who was gay, entered a second marriage was to actress Judith Anderson. His new wife, who was also gay, was known best for her role as the formidable Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1949 thriller, Rebecca. The papers at the time reported that Anderson was also scheduled to sit for Dalí, but the commission never came to fruition.[52]
Gala showing the Portait of Mrs Luther Greene at the Dalí exhibition at the
M. Knoedler and Company, Inc. Gallery in New York .
Photograph by Ralph Crane, 1943.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
M. Knoedler and Company, Inc. Gallery in New York .
Photograph by Ralph Crane, 1943.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
According to Ellen Jr., now Lenka Myers, Portrait of Mrs. Luther Greene was taken from life, and preliminary sketches exist, including one executed on stationary from the St. Regis Hotel. The elder Ellen Greene was twenty-six at the time, and as Dalí did not fail to notice, very lovely. That said, the subject's earthy beauty is rather trumped by a somewhat disgruntled expression, which may be related to Dalí’s insisting Mrs. Greene remain nude beneath her maroon wrap.[53] While Ellen appears rather brooding here, her daughter maintains she was quite the opposite, and in fact, a very kind and relaxed person.[54] In keeping with Dalí’s refusal to flatter his subjects, and sometimes to outright undermine their attractions, the portrait is distinguished from other works of the period by the simplicity of its execution. Ellen wears no gown or jewellery, and the sparse Port Lligat landscape is populated only by an armless surrealist figure in the background, and a smaller figure further on still.
Portrait of Marquis George de Cuevas, 1942
Oil on canvas, 79 x 59 cm (31.10” x 23.22”)
Private collection, USA (formerly Morrison's Collection (C&P), Palm Beach, Florida).
Oil on canvas, 79 x 59 cm (31.10” x 23.22”)
Private collection, USA (formerly Morrison's Collection (C&P), Palm Beach, Florida).
Yet another portrait Dalí completed in 1942 was of ballet impresario Jorge Cuevas Bartholín (1885-1961). Known as the Marquis George de Cuevas, he was born in Santiago, Chile, but had lived in the U.S. for many years. Cuevas was the son of a Chilean diplomat and politician, from whom it is assumed he inherited his title. Described by friends as being “extremely amusing and lively,” Cuevas met his future wife, Margaret Rockefeller Strong, in 1927, while he was working for the Russian Prince-turned-couturier, Felix Yousoupoff, better known as Irfé, in Paris. Margaret was from the immensely wealthy Rockefeller family, and the two married in 1928. As might be expected, the Marquis's marrying a Rockefeller was followed by whispers of opportunism, especially as it was widely known that Cuevas was gay. The couple had two children, and Cuevas became a U.S. citizen in 1940. Together they became great patrons of the arts, and after dabbling with a cosmetics line, among other things, Cuevas fashioned himself into a choreographer and ballet impresario.[55]
In 1944 Cuevas founded a ballet company modelled on the Ballets Russe. It went under several names, but mostly came to be known as the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, and ran until its founder's death in 1961. With his troupe, Cuevas worked with some of the most important names in dance, including George Balanchine, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska and Rosella Hightower.[56] In addition to the ballet company, in 1953 he became famous for hosting what is considered one of the most sumptuous and successful balls of his time – one which Dalí was engaged to “stage.” An eighteenth-century-themed costume party held in Biarritz, it was attended by two thousand guests from society's highest echelons. The Marquis again made headlines in 1958 over a highly staged fencing duel in Paris with the dancer Serge Lifar. This was allegedly over an argument concerning changes to Lifar’s ballet, Black and White, which was being performed by Cuevas’s company. By all accounts a remarkably effete confrontation, it was fought in front of dozens of reporters, and ended when Cuevas, then seventy-two, pinked the arm of his opponent, some twenty years his junior.[57]
In 1944 Cuevas founded a ballet company modelled on the Ballets Russe. It went under several names, but mostly came to be known as the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, and ran until its founder's death in 1961. With his troupe, Cuevas worked with some of the most important names in dance, including George Balanchine, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska and Rosella Hightower.[56] In addition to the ballet company, in 1953 he became famous for hosting what is considered one of the most sumptuous and successful balls of his time – one which Dalí was engaged to “stage.” An eighteenth-century-themed costume party held in Biarritz, it was attended by two thousand guests from society's highest echelons. The Marquis again made headlines in 1958 over a highly staged fencing duel in Paris with the dancer Serge Lifar. This was allegedly over an argument concerning changes to Lifar’s ballet, Black and White, which was being performed by Cuevas’s company. By all accounts a remarkably effete confrontation, it was fought in front of dozens of reporters, and ended when Cuevas, then seventy-two, pinked the arm of his opponent, some twenty years his junior.[57]
Dalí and Gala with Mona Harrison Williams and the Marquis de Cuevas, c. 1943.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
Cuevas was a good friend of the Dalís, and he and Salvador worked closely together in America in the early 1940s when the Marquis helped to organize and fund various ballets in which Dalí was involved, including Bacchanale (1939), Labyrinth (1941) Café de Chinitas (1943), and Sentimental Colloquy (1944).[58] The Dalís were also guests at a home owned by Cuevas and his wife in Franconia, New Hampshire. It was here in 1943 that Dalí wrote his novel Hidden Faces, claiming that it was completed in four months, with Dalí writing fourteen hours a day.[59] Their hosts also had a place in Palm Springs, and Etherington-Smith believes many of the American scenes in Hidden Faces were largely based on this setting.[60]
Dalí's portrait shows the Marquis standing in an arid, somewhat mountainous setting. He wears a suit, and stands, unsmiling, with his arms crossed upon his chest. His long shadow spreads out behind him, where on the ground sits is a thin, barefoot young man wearing a rustic costume. This figure is hunched over and holds a staff, suggesting he may be a shepherd or cowherd. Directly behind the Marquis is a tall, irregular cypress, at the bottom of which begins a circular staircase that winds up to the centre of an open, arched doorway embedded in the tree’s foliage. Dalí has chosen a muddy brown and green palette for the work, and the seemingly anthropomorphic clouds lend a sense of drama and foreboding that recalls the work of the Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin.
Dalí has bifurcated the canvas, with the Marquis and the cypress filling the left side of field, and the clouds and empty landscape filling the other. The only constants in both are the hunched boy, and Cuevas’s long shadow. In the background the shape of the cypress echoes the body of the Marquis; an ominous presence as, since pagan times the cypress has been associated with death, and is often found in cemeteries and carved on tombs.[61] This was a motif Dalí employed frequently, as he does in The Secret Life, in which he recounts a story about a false premonition he had about one of his companions dying, which he illustrates with a cypress embedded with human skulls.[62]
That Dalí would associate the Marquis de Cuevas with death is corroborated in an entry in the Dalí News of 1945, where he mentions an upcoming show of portraits. “Included for reshowing,” it says, “will be the painting of the Marquis de Cuevas, his body casting a shadow on a sun-dial where one can read an old inscription after his taste: ‘All the hours wound me, the last one kills me.’”[63] While Dalí’s description is far from what he actually depicted in the painting, rendered three years earlier, it does highlight his focus on Cuevas's shadow in the work, perhaps marking time over an imaginary sun-dial. Also, that Dalí associated the Marquis with the idea of death. Perhaps this is what he implies by the despondent shepherd in the background, and the doorway, embedded in the cypress like an entrance to the afterlife. As such, the work becomes something of a memento mori.
Dalí's portrait shows the Marquis standing in an arid, somewhat mountainous setting. He wears a suit, and stands, unsmiling, with his arms crossed upon his chest. His long shadow spreads out behind him, where on the ground sits is a thin, barefoot young man wearing a rustic costume. This figure is hunched over and holds a staff, suggesting he may be a shepherd or cowherd. Directly behind the Marquis is a tall, irregular cypress, at the bottom of which begins a circular staircase that winds up to the centre of an open, arched doorway embedded in the tree’s foliage. Dalí has chosen a muddy brown and green palette for the work, and the seemingly anthropomorphic clouds lend a sense of drama and foreboding that recalls the work of the Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin.
Dalí has bifurcated the canvas, with the Marquis and the cypress filling the left side of field, and the clouds and empty landscape filling the other. The only constants in both are the hunched boy, and Cuevas’s long shadow. In the background the shape of the cypress echoes the body of the Marquis; an ominous presence as, since pagan times the cypress has been associated with death, and is often found in cemeteries and carved on tombs.[61] This was a motif Dalí employed frequently, as he does in The Secret Life, in which he recounts a story about a false premonition he had about one of his companions dying, which he illustrates with a cypress embedded with human skulls.[62]
That Dalí would associate the Marquis de Cuevas with death is corroborated in an entry in the Dalí News of 1945, where he mentions an upcoming show of portraits. “Included for reshowing,” it says, “will be the painting of the Marquis de Cuevas, his body casting a shadow on a sun-dial where one can read an old inscription after his taste: ‘All the hours wound me, the last one kills me.’”[63] While Dalí’s description is far from what he actually depicted in the painting, rendered three years earlier, it does highlight his focus on Cuevas's shadow in the work, perhaps marking time over an imaginary sun-dial. Also, that Dalí associated the Marquis with the idea of death. Perhaps this is what he implies by the despondent shepherd in the background, and the doorway, embedded in the cypress like an entrance to the afterlife. As such, the work becomes something of a memento mori.
Hippolite Flandrin, Study (Young Male Nude Seated beside the Sea), circa 1837.
The hunched figure in the background is an intriguing addition to the portrait, and is remarkable for its clothed resemblance to Young Male Nude Seated beside the Sea by Hippolyte Flandrin, painted in the 1830s. Dali's inclusion of this reference not only adds an extra touch of academicism to the canvas, but likely makes reference to Cuevas's gay status, as Flandrin's celebration of male beauty was widely recognized as an icon of the male gaze. That the figure is clothed is no doubt to soften the reference, out of respect to Cuevas, as homosexuality was still very stigmatized, and indeed illegal in the U.S. at the time.
While the reason for Dalí’s saturnine approach in Portrait of Marquis George de Cuevas may remain a mystery, the canvas itself has an equally intriguing history. While it had disappeared from sight for many years, in 1995 it was found in a thrift shop in Soho, New York, by a minor antiques dealer called Robert Loughlin. Loughlin, who lived in a trailer in New Jersey, paid a mere forty dollars for it, as the shop staff believed it was an amateur copy of a Dalí. Suspecting it was authentic, Laughlin had it authenticated at Sotheby's, where it sold in 1996 for $165,000. It went up for auction again in 2011, this time selling for $962,500 U.S.[64] How the work found its way to a Soho thrift shop has never been determined.
While the reason for Dalí’s saturnine approach in Portrait of Marquis George de Cuevas may remain a mystery, the canvas itself has an equally intriguing history. While it had disappeared from sight for many years, in 1995 it was found in a thrift shop in Soho, New York, by a minor antiques dealer called Robert Loughlin. Loughlin, who lived in a trailer in New Jersey, paid a mere forty dollars for it, as the shop staff believed it was an amateur copy of a Dalí. Suspecting it was authentic, Laughlin had it authenticated at Sotheby's, where it sold in 1996 for $165,000. It went up for auction again in 2011, this time selling for $962,500 U.S.[64] How the work found its way to a Soho thrift shop has never been determined.
ENDNOTES
[1] See Julia Pine, “Anti-Surrealist Crossword Puzzles: Dalí, Breton and Text in Wartime America” in The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, vol. 1, no. 1, 2008, accessed March 5, 2016, http://jsa.asu.edu.
[2] Etherington-Smith, 272.
[3] In The Secret Life Dalí writes that “Just recently, in writing the preface to the catalogue of my last New York exhibit, which I signed with my pseudonym Jacinto Felipe, I felt that I needed, among other things, to have someone write a pamphlet on me bearing a title something like “Anti-Surrealist Dalí” (207 fn).
[4] Salvador Dalí (as Felipe Jacinto), “The Last Scandal of Salvador Dalí,” Salvador Dalí, exh. cat. (New York: Julien Levy Gallery, 1941), 2.
[5] Staff writer, “Mrs. Crosby’s New Boarder,” The New Yorker, April 3, 1941, n.p.
[6] Staff writer, “Around the Galleries,” Chicago Daily News, May 31, 1941, n.p.
[7] Henry McBride, “The Classic Dalí: Not So Very Different from Dalí the Surrealist,” New York Sun, April 26, 1941 (CDSS), 14.
[8] Staff writer, “Lady Mountbatten relates Story behind Her Portrait,” The Milwaukee Journal, Sunday, Sept. 21, 1941, VII 5.
[9] A number of period newspapers record the McCormicks’ meeting as taking place in 1930, although in a letter to Dalí written Nov. 15, 1940 held in the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archive, Harold McCormick claims he met his future wife in 1927.
[10] See staff writer, “How the Pleasant Little Nurse from Idaho Won the Very Rich Mr. McCormick,” Syracuse Journal Saturday, June 18, 1938, 18, accessed April 15, 2015, http://newspaperarchive.com/syracuse-journal/1938-06-18/page-18/.
[11] Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, This is Orson Welles (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 49.
[12] Staff writer, “Third Wedding for McCormick Quiet Affair,” via the Associated Press, unmarked period newspaper clipping, posted on The Villa Turicum Blog, accessed April 15, 2015, http://villaturicum.blogspot.ca/2010/12/other-mrs-mccormick.html.
[13] Staff writer, “Divorce Granted Mrs. Adah Tait,” St. Petersburg Times, Jan 4, 1949, 2, accessed April 15, 2015,
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19490104&id=V_hOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IU4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2666,5033088; staff writer, “The girl from Idaho,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 27, 1949, 18, accessed April 15, 2015, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19490227&id=GuMeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-AwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3895,5748106.
[14] Harold McCormick, letter to Salvador Dalí, November 15, 1940, the Gala-Salvador Dalí archives, Figueres, Spain.
[15] Harold McCormick, letter to Salvador Dalí, November 15, 1940, the Gala-Salvador Dalí archives, Figueres, Spain.
[16] Staff writer, “How the Pleasant Little Nurse . . .” Syracuse Journal Saturday, June 18, 1938, 18.
[17] Cousin Eve, The Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1943, n.p.
[18] Harold McCormick, letter to Salvador Dalí, November 15, 1940, the Gala-Salvador Dalí archives, Figueres, Spain.
[19] Harold McCormick, letter to Salvador Dalí, Feb. 3, 1941, the Gala-Salvador Dalí archives, Figueres, Spain. The McCormicks, it should be noted, also owned Dalí’s 1940 painting entitled Group of Women Imitating the Gesture of a Schooner, now in the collection of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation. It was also shown at the 1941 Levy Gallery show.
[20] Helen Young, “Portrait of Mrs. Harold McCormick by Dalí on Exhibition Tomorrow: Painting in New York Show of Surrealist Artist’s Work,” Chicago Herald-American, April 21, 1941, 11.
[21] “Portrait of Mrs. Harold McCormick,” Salvador Dalí: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, 1910-1964), the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, accessed April 28, 2015, http://www.salvador-Dalí.org/cataleg_raonat/fitxa_obra.php?obra=555&inici=1940&fi=1946.
[22] (Cowles, 223).
[23] “Mary Woodward Lasker,” Watertown Historical Society website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.watertownhistory.org/Articles/Lasker,%20Mary.htm.
[24] “Mandate,” “Foundation Overview,” Lasker Foundation website, accessed January 28, 2016, http://www.laskerfoundation.org/about/index.htm.
[25] “Mary Woodward Lasker,” Watertown Historical Society; The Lasker Legacy, The Lasker Foundation website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.laskerfoundation.org/.
[26] Mary Lasker Papers, 1940 - 1993, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/rbml/Lasker/main.html.
[27] Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz, The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (But True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2010), 335.
[28] Staff writer, “The Music World,” Lewiston Evening Journal, Dec 9, 1922, 6, accessed April 15, 2015, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19260611&id=RvRPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6VQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2403,1590367.
[29] H.G. Houser, “Claire Dux, Famous Soprano, Will Sing for Charity after Marriage,” The Evening Independent, June 11, 1926, 7. Accessed April 15, 2015, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19260611&id=RvRPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6VQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2403,1590367.
[30] Salvador Dalí, Hidden Faces, Trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: William and Morrow Company, 1974), 96.
[31] This autograph was bequeathed to The Newberry Library in Chicago. See the Merritt Room Ms. Coll. 110 BMEO, “Research Materials of the BMEO,” Loeb Music Library, Harvard University, accessed April 15,
2015, http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/isham/guides/mozart/research.html.
[32] Elsa Maxwell, “Dalí-ing with Democracy,” Elsa Maxwell’s Particles, New York Post, April 23, 1943, 12.
[33] Erick Langer, Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989), 111; Dalya Alberge, “Master of Antiquities, Master of Ceremonies,” The Independent, Wednesday January 19, 1994, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/arts--master-of-antiquities-master-of-ceremonies-collectors-dont-usually-appear-until-opening-night-to-clink-a-glass-or-two-at-the-private-view-but-when-george-ortiz-loans-his-collection-to-a-museum-he-moves-in-1407896.html.
[34] Entry for Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Mrs. Ortiz-Linares, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, London, Wednesday, June 19, 2013, Exh. Cat., Sotheby’s London, accessed January 30, 2016, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-l13006/lot.68.html
[35] Joao T. Magalhaes, “George Ortiz II,” Utz, accessed April 15, 2015, http://uutz.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/george-ortiz-ii/; Geraldine Norman, “The $12 Million Soup Tureen,” The Telegraph, April, 25, 1998, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4713343/The-12-million-soup-tureen.html.
[36] Letter from S. Dalí to Graziella Patiño de Ortiz-Linares, May 1942, translated from Spanish. As quoted in entry for Salvador Dalí, “Portrait of Mrs. Ortiz-Linares, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, London, Wednesday, June 19, 2013, exh. Cat., Sotheby’s London, accessed January 30, 2016, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-l13006/lot.68.html.
[37] Salvador Dalí, “Portrait of Mrs. Ortiz-Linares, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, London, Wednesday, June 19, 2013, exh. Cat., Sotheby’s London, accessed January 30, 2016, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-l13006/lot.68.html.
[38] Cousin Eve, The Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1943, n.p.
[39] “Dorothy Spreckels Munn,” obituary, The San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 2000, via the San Francisco Gate website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Dorothy-Spreckels-Munn-2780271.php.
[40] “Venus Rising from the Sea,” photograph caption, San Francisco Call-Bulletin Feb. 2, 1942, n.p.
[41] Staff writer, American Weekly, April 5, 1942, 3.
[42] Staff writer, American Weekly, April 5, 1942, 3.
[43] Staff writer, American Weekly, April 5, 1942, 3.
[44] Staff Writer, The New York Times, April 18, 1943, n.p.
[45] H.B., The Art Digest (New York), April 15, 1943, n.p.
[46] Staff Writer, “Heiress Likes Artist’s Work,” Watertown, Wisconsin Times, Feb. 24, 1942, n.p.; Louise Bruner, “Meet Reynolds Morse, Dalí’s Leading Fan Here,” The Cleveland News, June 10, 1944, n.p.
[47] Staff writer, “Rapport of Fatality,” Newsweek, April 26, 1943, 82.
[48] E-mail interview with Lenka Myers by Paul Dorsey, editor of the Dalí Planet blog, August 3, 2010.
[49] Myers-Dorsey interview, August 2, 2010.
[50] What appears to be a plan for the bedroom includes a white bearskin rug and a box for jewels.
[51] “Joseph Martin Jr.” obituary, San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2000, via San Francisco Gate website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Joseph-Martin-Jr-2698277.php#ixzz2NAYgUCE3; “Greene v. Superior Court,” Robert Crown Law Library, Stanford University online, accessed April 15, 2015, http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/greene-v-superior-court-29494.
[52] E-mail correspondence between Lenka Myers and Julia Pine, March 27, 2015.
[53] Myers-Dorsey interview, August 2, 2010.
[54] E-mail correspondence between Lenka Myers and Julia Pine, March 27, 2013 and March 27, 2015.
[55] See Dominick Dunne, “Dance Macabre: The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys,” Vanity Fair, Feb. 1987, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1987/02/dunne198702; and staff writer, “Marquis de Cuevas Dead at 75: Impresario of Ballet Company, Rockefeller Heiress’ Husband Gave Elaborate Parties — Duelled with Dancer in ‘58,” obituary, The New York Times, February 23, 1961, 27.
[56] Clement Crisp, “Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer, 2005), 1-17.
[57] Dominick Dunne, “Dance Macabre, Vanity Fair, Feb. 1987.
[58] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 237, 268.
[59] Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 424.
[60] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 281.
[61] George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 36.
[62] Dalí, The Secret Life, 147.
[63] Salvador Dalí, The Dalí News, privately published personal newsletter, 1945, 4.
[64] For a full account of this story, see Carol Vogel, Inside Art “A Thrift Shop Dalí,” The New York Times, Feb. 24, 1995, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/24/arts/inside-art.html.
