The faces of America’s first families, portrayed in the best Dalí tradition of careful draughtsmanship and exact likeness, are easily recognizable, but for the rest the brush of this exotic Spanish painter crawls along in its own macabre way, painting forbidden images, grotesque symbols that bring the old family skeleton right out to greet the public.
H.B., “Done the Dalí Way,”
Art Digest, April 15, 1943.
H.B., “Done the Dalí Way,”
Art Digest, April 15, 1943.
His Excellency Don Juan Cárdenas, Spanish Ambassador, c. 1943.
Oil on canvas, 61.3 x 50.8 cm (24.02” x 20.08”).
Private collection.
1943 saw the unveiling of Dalí’s most controversial portrait to date. Entitled His Excellency Don Juan Cárdenas, Spanish Ambassador, Dalí had shown a preliminary sketch for the work in the 1941 exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, together with Portrait of Lady Louis Mountbatten, and Portrait of Mrs. George Tait II (Mrs. Harold McCormick).[1] The subject was Spain’s American Ambassador, Don Juan Cárdenas (1881-1966), Spain’s representative of Franco’s regime in America, and his decision to paint the portrait scandalized European émigrés and refugees of the avant-garde.
Cárdenas was born in Seville, Spain, and studied law as a young man. He later joined the diplomatic service, and held numerous posts in varied destinations. His first ambassadorial assignments were in Bucharest in 1929, and then Tokyo in 1930. He served as Spain’s ambassador to France, from 1934 to 1939, and twice for the United States: between 1932 and 1933; and between 1939 and 1946. In 1953, he helped negotiate the Pact of Madrid, in which Spain allowed the United States to construct and to utilize air and naval bases on Spanish territory in return for economic and military aid. A fine speaker, he received many titles and decorations, among them the French Legion of Honour, the Order of Isabella the Catholic, the Spanish Order of Charles III, and was bestowed the title Grandee of Zaragoza, making him a high-ranking member of Spanish nobility.[2]
Ambassador Cárdenas was interested in art and culture, and in 1933 he gave an intriguing address at the University of Missouri while he was being awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of his cultural contributions. The lecture was published as a book, entitled Hispanic Culture and Language in the United States.[3] In it, Cárdenas argued that Spanish-American nations were a continuation of Spain, and presented a case for the United States to make Spanish its second language.”[4] A year later, Cárdenas also acted as patron for the loan of twenty-one Goya paintings, mostly portraits, for an exhibition held at the Knoedler Gallery in New York.[5]
Ambassador Cárdenas at his desk in Washington D.C. in 1932.
While in the United States, the Ambassador’s wife, Lucienne de Cárdenas, was of interest to the writers of society pages, and was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in Washington during her husband’s tenure in the 1930s.[6] She accompanied her husband on his return to the U.S. in 1939, and an unsigned letter to Dalí in the Gala-Salvador Dalí Archives, dated December 18, 1942, reports that “Lucienne de Cárdenas was at the Cuevases recently on one of her visits and there was much going to the opera and to the Waldorf to see ‘Los Chavalillos’ dance.”[7] (Dalí had painted the Marquis de Cuevas that same year.) More significantly, the archives also contain a number of letters and telegrams which reveal that Ambassador Cárdenas was instrumental in securing visas and passports for the Dalís while they were in Lisbon attempting to gain passage to America. At that time, Dalí and Gala were staying at the Hotel Metropol where they were stranded in the Portuguese capital with thousands of other refugees.
In The Secret Life Dalí explains how difficult a task it was getting the necessary documents, and how squalid and arduous Lisbon was for him and the seemingly endless stream of refugees. After fleeing Paris via Bordeaux and Spain just before the invasion of Paris, he writes that “Gala left directly for Lisbon, where I was to meet her as soon as my documents were in order, in order to arrange our trip to America, which appeared to bristle with red tape of a super-human refinement.”[8] He goes on to discuss how he and other refugees were like “fleeing fish,” in a kind of “gigantic frying-pan bubbling over with all the boiling oil of circumstances.” All were being immolated by “the red hot iron pincers of visas and passports, with a smell which choked respiration and which was the very smell of the nauseating fried fish of destiny.[9]” In light of such conditions, one can image how grateful Dalí must have been to Cárdenas for his assistance. Quite likely, the portrait was a token of thanks or, if Dalí received a commission, it was presumably painted with gratitude in mind.
While no documentation regarding the portrait has come to light, judging from its allusions to Spanish history, the intention was an official likeness reflecting the Ambassador’s profession and affiliation. The canvas is neatly divided in two, with three planes of interest. At the centre is the vast Spanish Renaissance-era complex El Escorial, a building Dalí once described as “realism and mysticism made architecture.”[10] The traditional residence of the King of Spain, the compound still stands today, and is located in the centre of the country at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, just northwest of Madrid. Conceived by King Philip II, it was intended as a monument and tomb for his father Charles V, as well as a monastery and a palace. Today it remains as a powerful symbol of Spanish tradition and nationalism.
Above and to the right of El Escorial is a dark cloud, and directly below, a white one. The latter has a dark grey underside beneath which float two jagged patches of smoke, likely a reminder of Spain’s recent battle-torn state, including the brutal air attacks of the kind that made the Basque town of Guernica famous worldwide. In the very foreground stands the Ambassador, a man in his middle years, with slicked back hair, wearing a jacket, vest and bow tie. In his hand is a leather-bound book with a crumbling spine. Although not, to the authors' knowledge, specifically marked, arts reporters in the early 1940s described it as “a book by Cervantes,” referring, no doubt, to Don Quixote, considered Spain’s greatest work of fiction, and certainly one to which Dalí made frequent reference.[11] Like the edifice behind Cárdenas, in this context it also represents pride in Spanish culture and tradition, as well as Cárdenas' patronage of the arts.
Behind his Excellency is a vast expanse of red earth, some of which belongs to the peripheral yard of the palace. Closer to Cárdenas is a sparse group of weather-beaten trees mottled with what are either dark shadows from the clouds, or patches of black smoke: another allusion, no doubt, to the devastation left by the Spanish Civil War. In the far distance are two figures, an adult and a child, and closer, two men in seventeenth century dress. These figures are a direct reference to Diego Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda (1634-35), a painting that has been called “one of the most Spanish of all pictures.”[12] One of a dozen scenes of battles depicting victories won by Philip IV’s armies, it originally hung in the Salón de Reinos in Buen Retiro in Madrid.[13]
Surrender of Breda illustrates the symbolic surrender of a key by the Dutch governor of Breda, Justin of Nassau, to Ambogio di Filippo Spinola, the Italian general who led Spanish troops to one of their rare victories in the Thirty Years War. This was the seizing of the Dutch city of Breda, and the scene in the painting depicts the capitulation to Spain by the Netherlands, made official on June 5, 1625.[14] A tribute to Spanish nationalism, this work, which presents a post-battle entente, surely makes reference to Franco’s rise to power in 1939. According to Dalí scholar William Jeffett, in his detailed study “The Artist and the Dictator: Salvador Dalí and Francisco Franco,” “The analogy Dalí wished to make was clear: Franco was the new Saviour of Spain. Having brought order out of anarchy, he embodies the values of Philip II.”[15] Of note, in 1974 Dalí revisited the subject of El Escorial and the reference to the two figures from Surrender of Breda in a portrait he painted of Franco’s granddaughter, Maria del Carmen Martinez-Bordiu de Borbón.
In The Secret Life Dalí explains how difficult a task it was getting the necessary documents, and how squalid and arduous Lisbon was for him and the seemingly endless stream of refugees. After fleeing Paris via Bordeaux and Spain just before the invasion of Paris, he writes that “Gala left directly for Lisbon, where I was to meet her as soon as my documents were in order, in order to arrange our trip to America, which appeared to bristle with red tape of a super-human refinement.”[8] He goes on to discuss how he and other refugees were like “fleeing fish,” in a kind of “gigantic frying-pan bubbling over with all the boiling oil of circumstances.” All were being immolated by “the red hot iron pincers of visas and passports, with a smell which choked respiration and which was the very smell of the nauseating fried fish of destiny.[9]” In light of such conditions, one can image how grateful Dalí must have been to Cárdenas for his assistance. Quite likely, the portrait was a token of thanks or, if Dalí received a commission, it was presumably painted with gratitude in mind.
While no documentation regarding the portrait has come to light, judging from its allusions to Spanish history, the intention was an official likeness reflecting the Ambassador’s profession and affiliation. The canvas is neatly divided in two, with three planes of interest. At the centre is the vast Spanish Renaissance-era complex El Escorial, a building Dalí once described as “realism and mysticism made architecture.”[10] The traditional residence of the King of Spain, the compound still stands today, and is located in the centre of the country at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, just northwest of Madrid. Conceived by King Philip II, it was intended as a monument and tomb for his father Charles V, as well as a monastery and a palace. Today it remains as a powerful symbol of Spanish tradition and nationalism.
Above and to the right of El Escorial is a dark cloud, and directly below, a white one. The latter has a dark grey underside beneath which float two jagged patches of smoke, likely a reminder of Spain’s recent battle-torn state, including the brutal air attacks of the kind that made the Basque town of Guernica famous worldwide. In the very foreground stands the Ambassador, a man in his middle years, with slicked back hair, wearing a jacket, vest and bow tie. In his hand is a leather-bound book with a crumbling spine. Although not, to the authors' knowledge, specifically marked, arts reporters in the early 1940s described it as “a book by Cervantes,” referring, no doubt, to Don Quixote, considered Spain’s greatest work of fiction, and certainly one to which Dalí made frequent reference.[11] Like the edifice behind Cárdenas, in this context it also represents pride in Spanish culture and tradition, as well as Cárdenas' patronage of the arts.
Behind his Excellency is a vast expanse of red earth, some of which belongs to the peripheral yard of the palace. Closer to Cárdenas is a sparse group of weather-beaten trees mottled with what are either dark shadows from the clouds, or patches of black smoke: another allusion, no doubt, to the devastation left by the Spanish Civil War. In the far distance are two figures, an adult and a child, and closer, two men in seventeenth century dress. These figures are a direct reference to Diego Velázquez’s Surrender of Breda (1634-35), a painting that has been called “one of the most Spanish of all pictures.”[12] One of a dozen scenes of battles depicting victories won by Philip IV’s armies, it originally hung in the Salón de Reinos in Buen Retiro in Madrid.[13]
Surrender of Breda illustrates the symbolic surrender of a key by the Dutch governor of Breda, Justin of Nassau, to Ambogio di Filippo Spinola, the Italian general who led Spanish troops to one of their rare victories in the Thirty Years War. This was the seizing of the Dutch city of Breda, and the scene in the painting depicts the capitulation to Spain by the Netherlands, made official on June 5, 1625.[14] A tribute to Spanish nationalism, this work, which presents a post-battle entente, surely makes reference to Franco’s rise to power in 1939. According to Dalí scholar William Jeffett, in his detailed study “The Artist and the Dictator: Salvador Dalí and Francisco Franco,” “The analogy Dalí wished to make was clear: Franco was the new Saviour of Spain. Having brought order out of anarchy, he embodies the values of Philip II.”[15] Of note, in 1974 Dalí revisited the subject of El Escorial and the reference to the two figures from Surrender of Breda in a portrait he painted of Franco’s granddaughter, Maria del Carmen Martinez-Bordiu de Borbón.
Diego Velazquez, Surrender of Breda, 1634-35.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
Dalí’s painting of Franco’s Ambassador was shocking to many of his former colleagues in the French and Spanish avant-garde, who sympathized almost exclusively with Spanish Republican causes. It must be understood that when the artist first joined the Surrealist movement, he had been equally as left-leaning as his colleagues. Throughout the 1930s, however, his politics shifted from proudly pro-Communist, to a stance that many suspected leaned heavily toward Spanish Nationalism and admiration of Franco’s regime. This speculated about-face was the cause of outright disgust by many of Dalí’s former friends and collaborators. Most notable among these were André Breton and Luis Buñuel, both of whom were closely identified with Dalí through joint projects and Surrealist affiliations, and both of whom continued to sympathize with Communist causes.
Dalí’s 1942 autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí revelled in his newfound Catholicism (the official religion of Franco’s regime), and strongly hinted at a Spanish Nationalist position. His painting of Ambassador Cardenás, Franco’s official representative in the U.S., was regarded as yet another announcement of that position. As the founder and leader of the Surrealist movement, Breton was duly concerned with Dalí’s political direction, not to mention being deeply embarrassed by the Spaniard's increasingly commercial projects and preposterous public behaviour, which toward the second half of the 1930s, was fast becoming the “face” of Surrealism. In an effort to disassociate Dalí with the Surrealist movement Breton waged a very effective “smear” campaign against the Spaniard, largely through opinion pieces in avant-garde publications.
Hearing of Dalí’s portrait of Cárdenas (the finished version of which was debuted at the Dalí exhibition in the spring of 1943 at the M. Knoedler Galleries), it seemed his worst fears about “Avida Dollars,” as Breton called Dalí (meaning “greedy dollars”), were being realized. All the more galling for Breton was the fact that Dalí could collude with the regime that was responsible for the shooting of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, one of the artist's best friends as a young man. “Freedom is at once madly desirable and quite fragile, which gives her the right to be jealous,” Breton wrote in a 1942 address to Yale students, which was later published as the treatise entitled “Situation of Surrealism between the Two Wars.”
To find oneself in disgrace before her, there is no need to go as far as . . . Avida Dollars who . . . recently, with obsequious academicism, gilded the portrait of the Spanish ambassador, that is to say, of the representative of Franco. Franco! That monster to whom the author of the portrait precisely owes the oppression of his country, not to mention the death of the great poet García Lorca, the best friend of his youth.[16]
The portrait of Cárdenas was a final blow for Dalí’s reputation in avant-garde or Surrealist circles in exile or elsewhere. As Etherington-Smith observes, “The distance he put between himself and his fellow artists during these years in America would never again be bridged.” She notes, however, that “it is to be supposed that he did not much care,” and indeed, on his side, Dalí was equally busy trying to erase his Surrealist affiliations, and attempting to “rebrand” himself as an academic, “classic” painter, with a healthy sideline in society portraiture.[17] He was, in fact, having a gay old time hob-knobbing with America’s most successful capitalists, and rubbing elbows with exiled Russian and European royals, aristocrats and their cohorts.
Dalí also knew full well that, among some circles, his suspected right-leaning direction was highly opportune in terms of his career in America. While Europeans might well have been equipped to assess the implications of his increasingly reactionary leanings, most Americans, predominantly unfamiliar with or uninterested in European politics beyond a growing dread of communism and a general understanding of the war, easily glossed over this seemingly benign and “daffy” Spanish artist’s alleged partisanship.[18] One of Dalí’s early biographers notes that “During the Second World War, his political viewpoint might have been under some scrutiny, but an avalanche of publicity so covered his movements that it was forgotten.”[19] Accordingly, beyond the consternation of the avant-garde expatriates, Dalí’s portrait of Cárdenas was publicly displayed in New York in 1943 with little comment from the press or other popular media.
Dalí did not, as Breton suggested, simply “gild the portrait of the Spanish ambassador” with “obsequious academicism,” however. While at first the portrait may give this impression, a closer look shows he does not portray Cárdenas in an altogether positive light. Of note is the dark patch discreetly daubed around the Ambassador’s silhouette. In addition to a sort of black halo, upon closer inspection the patch beginning at Cárdenas’ shoulders can be made out to be a cape, most notably of the type made famous by Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in the role of Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name. Dalí evidently noted the resemblance between the Ambassador with the slicked-back dark hair and Lugosi in this famous role. If the cape were not enough to hint at the resemblance, the artist has given the Cárdenas a similar bow-tie and waistcoat as the famous vampire, and most pointedly, a long, hooked thumbnail that mimics a Nosferatu-like claw. From this perspective, the entire canvas, with its dark, stormy sky, craggy, blasted trees and ghostly dark patches behind the subject, reads like a scene from a horror film.
Dalí’s 1942 autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí revelled in his newfound Catholicism (the official religion of Franco’s regime), and strongly hinted at a Spanish Nationalist position. His painting of Ambassador Cardenás, Franco’s official representative in the U.S., was regarded as yet another announcement of that position. As the founder and leader of the Surrealist movement, Breton was duly concerned with Dalí’s political direction, not to mention being deeply embarrassed by the Spaniard's increasingly commercial projects and preposterous public behaviour, which toward the second half of the 1930s, was fast becoming the “face” of Surrealism. In an effort to disassociate Dalí with the Surrealist movement Breton waged a very effective “smear” campaign against the Spaniard, largely through opinion pieces in avant-garde publications.
Hearing of Dalí’s portrait of Cárdenas (the finished version of which was debuted at the Dalí exhibition in the spring of 1943 at the M. Knoedler Galleries), it seemed his worst fears about “Avida Dollars,” as Breton called Dalí (meaning “greedy dollars”), were being realized. All the more galling for Breton was the fact that Dalí could collude with the regime that was responsible for the shooting of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, one of the artist's best friends as a young man. “Freedom is at once madly desirable and quite fragile, which gives her the right to be jealous,” Breton wrote in a 1942 address to Yale students, which was later published as the treatise entitled “Situation of Surrealism between the Two Wars.”
To find oneself in disgrace before her, there is no need to go as far as . . . Avida Dollars who . . . recently, with obsequious academicism, gilded the portrait of the Spanish ambassador, that is to say, of the representative of Franco. Franco! That monster to whom the author of the portrait precisely owes the oppression of his country, not to mention the death of the great poet García Lorca, the best friend of his youth.[16]
The portrait of Cárdenas was a final blow for Dalí’s reputation in avant-garde or Surrealist circles in exile or elsewhere. As Etherington-Smith observes, “The distance he put between himself and his fellow artists during these years in America would never again be bridged.” She notes, however, that “it is to be supposed that he did not much care,” and indeed, on his side, Dalí was equally busy trying to erase his Surrealist affiliations, and attempting to “rebrand” himself as an academic, “classic” painter, with a healthy sideline in society portraiture.[17] He was, in fact, having a gay old time hob-knobbing with America’s most successful capitalists, and rubbing elbows with exiled Russian and European royals, aristocrats and their cohorts.
Dalí also knew full well that, among some circles, his suspected right-leaning direction was highly opportune in terms of his career in America. While Europeans might well have been equipped to assess the implications of his increasingly reactionary leanings, most Americans, predominantly unfamiliar with or uninterested in European politics beyond a growing dread of communism and a general understanding of the war, easily glossed over this seemingly benign and “daffy” Spanish artist’s alleged partisanship.[18] One of Dalí’s early biographers notes that “During the Second World War, his political viewpoint might have been under some scrutiny, but an avalanche of publicity so covered his movements that it was forgotten.”[19] Accordingly, beyond the consternation of the avant-garde expatriates, Dalí’s portrait of Cárdenas was publicly displayed in New York in 1943 with little comment from the press or other popular media.
Dalí did not, as Breton suggested, simply “gild the portrait of the Spanish ambassador” with “obsequious academicism,” however. While at first the portrait may give this impression, a closer look shows he does not portray Cárdenas in an altogether positive light. Of note is the dark patch discreetly daubed around the Ambassador’s silhouette. In addition to a sort of black halo, upon closer inspection the patch beginning at Cárdenas’ shoulders can be made out to be a cape, most notably of the type made famous by Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in the role of Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name. Dalí evidently noted the resemblance between the Ambassador with the slicked-back dark hair and Lugosi in this famous role. If the cape were not enough to hint at the resemblance, the artist has given the Cárdenas a similar bow-tie and waistcoat as the famous vampire, and most pointedly, a long, hooked thumbnail that mimics a Nosferatu-like claw. From this perspective, the entire canvas, with its dark, stormy sky, craggy, blasted trees and ghostly dark patches behind the subject, reads like a scene from a horror film.
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Right: Bela Lugosi as Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name.
While subtle enough to be overlooked, these elements add an extra interpretive dimension to His Excellencey Don Juan Cárdenas, Spanish Ambassador. Dalí willingly produced a portrait of Franco’s representative in America, in a seeming gesture of concession to the Spanish fascist regime, yet he simultaneously undermines the Ambassador’s dignity by comparing him to a B-movie actor playing a blood-sucking vampire. The question remains, was Dalí commenting on the Franco régime, or simply poking fun at his subject by pointing out a physical resemblance?
Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams, 1943
Oil on canvas, 92 x 62 cm (36.22” x 24.40”)
Previously, Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris
Now in a private collection (sold at Sotheby’s, London, February 5th, 2013)
Oil on canvas, 92 x 62 cm (36.22” x 24.40”)
Previously, Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris
Now in a private collection (sold at Sotheby’s, London, February 5th, 2013)
In 1943 Dalí completed another portrait where clothing is an intriguing feature. This was of an immensely wealthy collector and patron of the arts, Mrs. Harrison Williams (1897-1983). Born to humble circumstances in Louisville, Kentucky, Margaret Edmona Travis Strader was her maiden name. Charismatic and beautiful, Mona married five times. Her third husband, whom she wed in 1926, was Harrison Charles Williams, the multimillionaire founder of American Gas & Electric Company (AG&E). After Williams’ death, Mona married Count Albrecht von Bismarck-Schönhausen, the grandson of Germany’s Iron Chancellor, better known as “Eddie.” Upon his death, she wed Eddie’s doctor, Umberto de Martini. She is remembered today as Mona Bismarck, the American socialite and fashion icon with extraordinary taste, panache, and of course, wealth. One particularly glowing obituary describes her as “the incredibly beautiful silver-haired cat-eyed American fashion plate and star of international society.” Mona, it continues, was “a creature of incomparable style, taste and flair which translated to everything she touched – her clothes, her beautiful houses all over the world, the ravishing gardens she tended herself.”[20] Thanks to a large bequest, her Paris townhouse, overlooking the Eiffel Tower, has become the Mona Bismarck Foundation, which promotes cultural activities and Franco-American imperatives. Until recently, it was here that Dalí’s portrait was housed.
The history of Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams has not been well-documented, and needs to be considered in order to fully grasp the work’s complexities and idiosyncrasies. Dalí employed a bronze-toned palette of golds and browns, which evokes ancient statuary and a historical atmosphere enhanced by classical, Renaissance, and academic allusions. These were, no doubt, inspired by the Williams’ own collection of antiquities, which was showcased at their Manhattan mansion at 94th Street and Fifth Avenue. Perhaps overwhelmed by this collection, the painter had appears to have succumbed to horror vacui, cramming every cranny with a mish-mash of famous landmarks such as the Great Sphinx at Giza, the foot from the Colossus of Constantine, pyramids, friezes, and herms. These are interspersed with items from the Dalí’s own visual lexicon, particularly at centre-right, where sits a man with a bowed head; a figure who appears frequently in the artist’s WWII-era work, most notably as the monumental backdrop of his 1941 ballet Labyrinth.
Although visually complex and compelling, Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams is also one of the most awkward and perplexing of Dalí’s café society subjects, for many reasons. Take, for instance, Mona’s exceedingly awkward pose, in which her hands seem to clutch an invisible object, and her head, lit up like a lightbulb, which teeters precariously atop her shoulders. As New York World-Telegram critic Emily Genauer put it in a Knoedler Gallery review when the painting was first shown, “the luminous face emerging from the mysterious slatey blues of the rest of the composition has about as much relationship to it as — well, as if the painting were a screen with a hole in it through which the subject poked her head, so it appeared to sit on the shoulders of a painted body.”[21]
Genauer’s unease with Mrs. William’s oddly placed and strangely luminous head is well founded and has a very specific explanation. This begins with a telling photograph of Dalí’s studio in Monterey, which was taken by local photographer Julian P. Graham in the early 1940s. It depicts Dalí’s studio, and in it, his working image for Mona’s likeness, which appears to be an enhanced photograph or pre-existing portrait of Williams, seemingly in another artist’s hand. In it, Mona’s face is framed by a sort of soft-focus cloud, and she clutches one of her many small pet dogs. As the face is identical to that in Dalí’s portrait, it seems the artist literally transcribed it to his own work.
Close-up of portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams, photographed next to Dalí in his studio in Monterey in the early 1940's.
Full photograph with Dalí not currently available.
Artist unknown. Photographer, Julian P. Graham.
Image courtesy Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios.
Full photograph with Dalí not currently available.
Artist unknown. Photographer, Julian P. Graham.
Image courtesy Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios.
Another oddity is the subject’s bare feet and ragged dress — hardly appropriate for a woman of celebrated fashion sense who frequently appeared on “best-dressed” lists. According to period sources, the socialite never saw the portrait in progress, and when Dalí delivered it, she was shocked to find herself depicted nude.[22] Dalí evidently transposed her head onto another body, the model for which is not known, or perhaps he worked from his imagination. This amalgam was not as successful as it might have been, which no doubt explains the subject’s awkward carriage.
As a consequence of being portrayed in such a revealing manner, Mona apparently withheld payment until Dalí covered her up, thus explaining the poorly-painted brown frock in the current version of the work. Close inspection reveals that Dalí’s response was simply slather a wash over "Mona’s" body – which he did so carelessly that drips are evident at the neck- and hem-lines. While for some artists this might be an index of a more modern painterly approach, it is completely out of character for Dalí’s work at the time, then known for old master technique and slick finishes. The drab, daubed “dress” may well have been Dalí’s protest for having to alter his work, with the added dollop of irony being a woman of such wealth and taste appearing so shabbily attired. As an American fashion “icon,” it seems given Williams would have chosen to be commemorated wearing something more flattering than a ragged, dirt-coloured frock. Dalí was to later justify this alteration by stating poetically that “rags are the eternal garment, the constant in dressing.’[23]
Another oddity is the subject’s bare feet and ragged dress — hardly appropriate for a woman of celebrated fashion sense who frequently appeared on “best-dressed” lists. According to period sources, the socialite never saw the portrait in progress, and when Dalí delivered it, she was shocked to find herself depicted nude.[22] Dalí evidently transposed her head onto another body, the model for which is not known, or perhaps he worked from his imagination. This amalgam was not as successful as it might have been, which no doubt explains the subject’s awkward carriage.
As a consequence of being portrayed in such a revealing manner, Mona apparently withheld payment until Dalí covered her up, thus explaining the poorly-painted brown frock in the current version of the work. Close inspection reveals that Dalí’s response was simply slather a wash over "Mona’s" body – which he did so carelessly that drips are evident at the neck- and hem-lines. While for some artists this might be an index of a more modern painterly approach, it is completely out of character for Dalí’s work at the time, then known for old master technique and slick finishes. The drab, daubed “dress” may well have been Dalí’s protest for having to alter his work, with the added dollop of irony being a woman of such wealth and taste appearing so shabbily attired. As an American fashion “icon,” it seems given Williams would have chosen to be commemorated wearing something more flattering than a ragged, dirt-coloured frock. Dalí was to later justify this alteration by stating poetically that “rags are the eternal garment, the constant in dressing.’[23]
Mona posing with her portrait by Dalí.
Despite the widely publicized scandal about the work, close inspection suggests that Dalí did not in fact render Mrs. Williams entirely nude, but rather draped in a diaphanous white robe in the style of a classical Greek or Egyptian tunic or chiton. Vestiges of this garment can still be detected behind the brown wash, and reveals her entire body was similarly luminous, consistent with the light on and around Mona’s face. In keeping with the ancient Egyptian and classicizing approach of the background of Portrait of Mrs. Harrison Williams, it seems Dalí originally painted Mona as an ancient divinity, barefoot and radiant from head to toe, draped in a garment appropriate for a classical goddess. According to Newsweek, who interviewed Dalí in 1943, and inquired about the symbolism of the portrait, the artist replied: “. . . I consider it the height of luxury to walk barefoot if one wishes among riches. She represents the universality of all civilizations from Egypt on.”[24]
A heavy, possibly pearl necklace also remains visible, and the subject’s awkward, grasping hand gesture suggests she was originally intended to hold something, or that something has been painted out. If so, this was most likely one of Mona’s beloved dogs as appeared in the photograph Dalí worked from, and in particular, Micky, whom she adored and was seldom photographed without. The noticeable white dot that has broken through the brown overpainting may, in fact, be a dog tag or ornament from the animal’s collar.
A heavy, possibly pearl necklace also remains visible, and the subject’s awkward, grasping hand gesture suggests she was originally intended to hold something, or that something has been painted out. If so, this was most likely one of Mona’s beloved dogs as appeared in the photograph Dalí worked from, and in particular, Micky, whom she adored and was seldom photographed without. The noticeable white dot that has broken through the brown overpainting may, in fact, be a dog tag or ornament from the animal’s collar.
Mrs. Harrison Williams, circa 1940.
Portrait of Princess Gourielli (Helena Rubinstein), 1943.
Oil on canvas. 89 x 64 cm; 35 x 25 ¼ in.
Signed Gala Salvador Dalí, and dated (centre right).
Formerly Helena Rubinstein Foundation Collection.
Oil on canvas. 89 x 64 cm; 35 x 25 ¼ in.
Signed Gala Salvador Dalí, and dated (centre right).
Formerly Helena Rubinstein Foundation Collection.
In 1943 Dalí painted one of Dalí’s best-known society portraits, his Portrait of Princess Gourielli, which depicts multi-millionaire cosmetics mogul best known as Helena Rubinstein. Perhaps more than any of his other portraits, completing this commission was evidently a great adventure for Dalí, who witnessed and later wrote with immense relish about his subject’s extravagances and eccentricities. In The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí, he describes her as “a Dalínian personage. Her love of jewels and money, her caprices, her demands were deserving of my full attention.”[25] Dalí recalls with caustic humour their first encounter, and the deep impression the beauty maven had upon him. “When I first met Helena Rubinstein in New York,” he writes,
. . . all I saw was the majesty of a bourbon nose, as huge as a plowshare, coming toward me, carried hoppingly on short legs, while under the light of the chandeliers there shone a constellation of emeralds that gave one the impression that her fingers were carrying torches while her neck was girt with flames. This burst of luster told me she had multimillions. When she laughed, her eyes remained as cold as high-shoe buttons and her skin—as parchmented as the face of Tz’u-hsi, the last Dowager Empress of China, whom she resembled – was furrowed with colored wrinkles, as with the war paint of an old Sioux chief.[26]
After ushering Dalí through the thirty-plus rooms of her 625 Park Avenue penthouse, “from sitting room to picture galleries,” they arrived at Rubinstein’s bedroom. “There,” Dalí notes with cruel comparison “she nestled like the Minotaur in the heart of the labyrinth and waited for her prey in an immense transparent bed, the legs and incurved half-canopy of which were fluorescent.” Lying thus, he opines, she “seemed less wrinkled than usual,” and notes with great satisfaction how she “wiped her nose on the satin sheets.”[27]
Helena Rubinstein (1870-1965), pioneer female entrepreneur extraordinaire, had in fact earned the right to wipe her nose wherever she wished. Born Chaja Rubinstein in Krakow, then part of the Austrian Empire, through sheer ambition, business acumen and hard work, this daughter of a humble Jewish shopkeeper grew to become the world’s first female self-made millionaire. Her company, Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, began with a simple face cream, the recipe for which she garnered from a doctor friend of the family. Filling a niche in the market that was to become one of the most lucrative of the 20th century, the small business she started in Australia in the late 1880s soon expanded into a beauty and cosmetics empire, reaching from Australia to South Africa, and across Europe and North America.
While a version of the brand still exists today, now owned by conglomerate L’Oréal, for a greater part of the 20th century it was a household name. According to one biographer, “During the depression the public was polled on who were the ten best-known women in the world. Helena Rubinstein came out higher on the list than the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt.”[28] As the figurehead of her brand, Rubinstein herself was famous for being obsessed with work, her sumptuous couture and jewellery collection, her stunning homes in London, Paris and New York, as well as her extraordinary collection of modern art. While she was fiercely ambitious, and adored the trappings of wealth, she was also a renowned philanthropist. Among her many charitable projects, she established the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, largely to benefit women, and helped fund organizations specializing in medical research and aid. Always interested in the arts, she established the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, and several fine arts scholarships, primarily for Israelis, Americans and Australians.
The eldest of eight children, Rubinstein later involved her many sisters in the running of her empire. She married twice, the first time in 1908 to American journalist Edward William Titus. They had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus, and Horace Titus, and then divorced, reputedly over Titus’ numerous infidelities. In 1938 she married Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, a down-on-his-luck Georgian prince twenty-three years her junior. Although by all accounts a congenial pair, theirs appears to have been a marriage of convenience, particularly for Rubinstein, who thenceforth marketed her new title of Princess to great advantage.
. . . all I saw was the majesty of a bourbon nose, as huge as a plowshare, coming toward me, carried hoppingly on short legs, while under the light of the chandeliers there shone a constellation of emeralds that gave one the impression that her fingers were carrying torches while her neck was girt with flames. This burst of luster told me she had multimillions. When she laughed, her eyes remained as cold as high-shoe buttons and her skin—as parchmented as the face of Tz’u-hsi, the last Dowager Empress of China, whom she resembled – was furrowed with colored wrinkles, as with the war paint of an old Sioux chief.[26]
After ushering Dalí through the thirty-plus rooms of her 625 Park Avenue penthouse, “from sitting room to picture galleries,” they arrived at Rubinstein’s bedroom. “There,” Dalí notes with cruel comparison “she nestled like the Minotaur in the heart of the labyrinth and waited for her prey in an immense transparent bed, the legs and incurved half-canopy of which were fluorescent.” Lying thus, he opines, she “seemed less wrinkled than usual,” and notes with great satisfaction how she “wiped her nose on the satin sheets.”[27]
Helena Rubinstein (1870-1965), pioneer female entrepreneur extraordinaire, had in fact earned the right to wipe her nose wherever she wished. Born Chaja Rubinstein in Krakow, then part of the Austrian Empire, through sheer ambition, business acumen and hard work, this daughter of a humble Jewish shopkeeper grew to become the world’s first female self-made millionaire. Her company, Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, began with a simple face cream, the recipe for which she garnered from a doctor friend of the family. Filling a niche in the market that was to become one of the most lucrative of the 20th century, the small business she started in Australia in the late 1880s soon expanded into a beauty and cosmetics empire, reaching from Australia to South Africa, and across Europe and North America.
While a version of the brand still exists today, now owned by conglomerate L’Oréal, for a greater part of the 20th century it was a household name. According to one biographer, “During the depression the public was polled on who were the ten best-known women in the world. Helena Rubinstein came out higher on the list than the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt.”[28] As the figurehead of her brand, Rubinstein herself was famous for being obsessed with work, her sumptuous couture and jewellery collection, her stunning homes in London, Paris and New York, as well as her extraordinary collection of modern art. While she was fiercely ambitious, and adored the trappings of wealth, she was also a renowned philanthropist. Among her many charitable projects, she established the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, largely to benefit women, and helped fund organizations specializing in medical research and aid. Always interested in the arts, she established the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, and several fine arts scholarships, primarily for Israelis, Americans and Australians.
The eldest of eight children, Rubinstein later involved her many sisters in the running of her empire. She married twice, the first time in 1908 to American journalist Edward William Titus. They had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus, and Horace Titus, and then divorced, reputedly over Titus’ numerous infidelities. In 1938 she married Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, a down-on-his-luck Georgian prince twenty-three years her junior. Although by all accounts a congenial pair, theirs appears to have been a marriage of convenience, particularly for Rubinstein, who thenceforth marketed her new title of Princess to great advantage.
Gala, Helena Rubinstein and Dalí, at the book launch of The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, and unveiling
of Dalí’s commissioned murals at Rubinstein’s Park Avenue penthouse apartment. November 12, 1942.
Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023
of Dalí’s commissioned murals at Rubinstein’s Park Avenue penthouse apartment. November 12, 1942.
Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023
While Dalí had plenty to say about Rubinstein – little of it flattering, Madame herself was more charitable to the artist from whom, in 1942, she had commissioned to paint a group of three large murals to decorate the dining room of her penthouse. “I see Dalí often when he is in New York. I find him stimulating company, although at times perhaps a little too stimulating,” she revealed to Dalí biographer Fleur Cowles. “He is always full of ideas, the most recent being to paint a piano for me, with a waterfall pouring out on to the keys – the piano to be hung from the ceiling.”[29] Dalí and Gala were also occasional guests in her home, and Rubinstein explains how at dinner one night, Dalí suggested he paint her portrait, to which she readily agreed.[30]
As someone who worked so much improving the appearance of the human visage, it is not surprising that Rubinstein was very interested in portraiture. Throughout her life she readily commissioned portraits of herself by celebrated artists, including such luminaries as Raoul Dufy, Modigliani, Marie Laurencin and Graham Sutherland. In 1960 she even established a £300 annual Rubinstein Prize for outstanding portraits by Australian artists. “I’ve always been keenly interested in human faces,” she said in an interview with the Los Angeles Examiner in 1951. “I felt that an artist’s real intentions become most vividly manifest when he paints a face.”[31] According to Rubinstein, “Salvador Dalí claims that he was recognized as a portrait painter in America only after he painted my portrait.”[32]
For Portrait of Princess Gourielli, three sittings took place at Dalí’s hotel, and some preliminary sketches for the work survive. Although Dalí always liked to give the appearance of working from life, Rubinstein’s likeness notably resembles an image of Rubinstein from a group photograph used in press coverage taken at her apartment for the launch of Dalí’s autobiography, on November 12, 1942. The artist appears in the photograph standing next to her, and he certainly had access to this image, suggesting this may have been his source.
As someone who worked so much improving the appearance of the human visage, it is not surprising that Rubinstein was very interested in portraiture. Throughout her life she readily commissioned portraits of herself by celebrated artists, including such luminaries as Raoul Dufy, Modigliani, Marie Laurencin and Graham Sutherland. In 1960 she even established a £300 annual Rubinstein Prize for outstanding portraits by Australian artists. “I’ve always been keenly interested in human faces,” she said in an interview with the Los Angeles Examiner in 1951. “I felt that an artist’s real intentions become most vividly manifest when he paints a face.”[31] According to Rubinstein, “Salvador Dalí claims that he was recognized as a portrait painter in America only after he painted my portrait.”[32]
For Portrait of Princess Gourielli, three sittings took place at Dalí’s hotel, and some preliminary sketches for the work survive. Although Dalí always liked to give the appearance of working from life, Rubinstein’s likeness notably resembles an image of Rubinstein from a group photograph used in press coverage taken at her apartment for the launch of Dalí’s autobiography, on November 12, 1942. The artist appears in the photograph standing next to her, and he certainly had access to this image, suggesting this may have been his source.
Preliminary sketch for Portrait of Princess Gourielli (Helena Rubinstein), circa 1943.
Once finished and the frame selected, Dalí presented the canvas to its subject. While she appears to have graciously accepted the work, Rubinstein told Fleur Cowles that “Dalí has great charm, and, although the portrait was wonderful, he made it seem more wonderful.”[33] The work does indeed inspire wonder, in that the artist appears to have loaded it with symbolism, rather heavy-handedly inviting viewer analysis. One of Dalí’s more fantasy-based works of the 1940s, in it Rubinstein’s head protrudes from a craggy cliff, below which lies a quiet sea, leading into a cavern below. To the left, carved into the cliff, is a female nude, whose head disappears into the rock. Upon a boulder in the water frolic a female nude and an angel-child, while ashore, two tiny figures stand at the water’s edge. To Rubinstein’s right is a craggy outcropping, on top of which is a grouping shaped to echo the subject’s head. No doubt in reference to Rubinstein’s famous collection of jewels, Dalí has distinctly modelled it to resemble a bibelot-box with an open lid, inside of which appears to be a dark jewel or black pearl.
Although seventy-three at the time the portrait was taken, as befitting a beauty doyenne, Rubinstein has been rendered with a flawless complexion, her dark hair pulled back her signature Spanish bun. Dalí’s decision to depict only her head may have been a practical one. Rubinstein expected, and paid for, a flattering portrait, something of a challenge for the artist tasked with depicting a decidedly rotund septuagenarian who stood four feet ten inches (147 cm) tall. Cecil Beaton, who photographed Madame in the late 1930s, claimed he had to “chop” four inches from her waistline while editing a portrait of her.[34] Perhaps as a form of surrogate for the older woman’s physique, Dalí has added the lithe and youthful headless nude “carved” into the cliff to the older woman’s right.
A jewelled band adorns Rubinstein’s crown, and it should be noted that her earrings do not hang in accordance with gravity. This perhaps demonstrates the literal extent to which Dalí has transposed a photograph of Rubinstein, which he then tilted to fit his composition. It appears the earrings were left to dangle in the direction they had in the original image. The artist has swathed Rubinstein’s neck in jewels, and two of the four strands of grey-green stones from her necklace appear attached to the rocks behind her. About this conceit, Rubinstein wrote that “In the portrait by Dalí I stand chained by ropes of emeralds to a high rock. He felt that I was bound by my possessions, which is very far from the truth.”[35] Dalí, however, gave another explanation for the bejewelled fetters, telling Look Magazine in 1950 that he saw her “as a beautiful woman chained by ropes of jewels to the hard rock of duty, deaf to the little figures symbolizing love, play and pleasure, which beckon her.”[36]
Although seventy-three at the time the portrait was taken, as befitting a beauty doyenne, Rubinstein has been rendered with a flawless complexion, her dark hair pulled back her signature Spanish bun. Dalí’s decision to depict only her head may have been a practical one. Rubinstein expected, and paid for, a flattering portrait, something of a challenge for the artist tasked with depicting a decidedly rotund septuagenarian who stood four feet ten inches (147 cm) tall. Cecil Beaton, who photographed Madame in the late 1930s, claimed he had to “chop” four inches from her waistline while editing a portrait of her.[34] Perhaps as a form of surrogate for the older woman’s physique, Dalí has added the lithe and youthful headless nude “carved” into the cliff to the older woman’s right.
A jewelled band adorns Rubinstein’s crown, and it should be noted that her earrings do not hang in accordance with gravity. This perhaps demonstrates the literal extent to which Dalí has transposed a photograph of Rubinstein, which he then tilted to fit his composition. It appears the earrings were left to dangle in the direction they had in the original image. The artist has swathed Rubinstein’s neck in jewels, and two of the four strands of grey-green stones from her necklace appear attached to the rocks behind her. About this conceit, Rubinstein wrote that “In the portrait by Dalí I stand chained by ropes of emeralds to a high rock. He felt that I was bound by my possessions, which is very far from the truth.”[35] Dalí, however, gave another explanation for the bejewelled fetters, telling Look Magazine in 1950 that he saw her “as a beautiful woman chained by ropes of jewels to the hard rock of duty, deaf to the little figures symbolizing love, play and pleasure, which beckon her.”[36]
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota.
Most frequently, the symbolism of this work is likened to the classical Greek myth of Perseus, who was tasked with freeing the maiden Andromeda, who was chained to the rocks. Or, as Etherington-Smith suggests, Dalí depicts the beauty queen as a female Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to mankind.[37] In an American context, however, a colossal head emerging from a mountainside or cliff was most readily compared to the monumental presidential tributary portraits carved into Mount Rushmore. Rushmore was very much in the public eye in America when Dalí painted Rubinstein’s portrait, having been officially completed in 1941.[38] As an unimpressed critic from the New York Sun wrote, reviewing Dalí’s portrait show at the Knoedler Gallery in 1943, he thought the work was “like the Gutzon Borglum monstrosities out west.”[39] Nevertheless, Portrait of Princess Gourielli remains one of Dalí’s best known portraits today, and is certainly among the most Surrealist of his American ones.
Helena Rubinstein with her numerous portraits by modern masters. Dalí’s is top, left.
* * * * *
By early 1943, Dalí had produced ten commissioned portraits since his exile. As Elsa Maxwell put it, “he became sufficiently famous to attract the snobs in the portrait field and is now painting all of America’s richest and most beautiful women.”[40] To showcase these, and make it perfectly clear he was “open for business” for more portrait commissions, between April 14 and May 5 of 1943, Dalí had his first and only exhibition that was dedicated primarily to his society portraits. Staged at the Galleries of M. Knoedler and Company on New York City’s East Fifty-Seventh Street, it featured all ten portraits, as well as a number of other works he had produced in those three notable years. Mrs. Lasker’s sketch was included, and the oils of Lady Mountbatten and Mrs. McCormick, now Mrs. George Tate II, made a second appearance. Also included were a number of portraits of Gala, some unfinished, several drawings, many inspired by Renaissance themes, and a number of paintings including several now-famous works that reference and comment upon America, such as “Geopoliticus” Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, and the poignant Poetry of America.
Dalí was evidently doing very well despite the war raging overseas, and perhaps as a result, the catalogue for the Knoedler show was much less bombastic than the Levy Gallery one, which saw him attempting to find his bearings and drum up business in an uncertain milieu. In it, he explains how contrary to expectations that he would wither when “removed from the stimulus of Paris,” he had in fact thrived in the “New World,” and lists his numerous accomplishments of the last three years. Regarding technique, he continues with the “classic” theme, writing, “in the domain of drawing,” my whole ambition is to rediscover the tradition of the old masters.”[41] Where the portraits are concerned, he explains rather cryptically that “my aim was to establish a rapport of fatality between each of the different personalities and their backgrounds, in a manner which, far from any direct symbolism, constitutes the mediumistic and iconographic volume that each person represented was capable of releasing in my mind.”[42]
Dalí was evidently doing very well despite the war raging overseas, and perhaps as a result, the catalogue for the Knoedler show was much less bombastic than the Levy Gallery one, which saw him attempting to find his bearings and drum up business in an uncertain milieu. In it, he explains how contrary to expectations that he would wither when “removed from the stimulus of Paris,” he had in fact thrived in the “New World,” and lists his numerous accomplishments of the last three years. Regarding technique, he continues with the “classic” theme, writing, “in the domain of drawing,” my whole ambition is to rediscover the tradition of the old masters.”[41] Where the portraits are concerned, he explains rather cryptically that “my aim was to establish a rapport of fatality between each of the different personalities and their backgrounds, in a manner which, far from any direct symbolism, constitutes the mediumistic and iconographic volume that each person represented was capable of releasing in my mind.”[42]
Catalogue for the exhibition Dalí, held at the galleries of M. Knoedler and Company, Inc., New York City, April 14 – May 5, 1943.
Dalí signing the catalogue for his 1943 Knoedler Gallery, New York, portrait exhibition, for the collector
Reynolds Morse, who later, with his wife Eleanor, would become among Dalí’s greatest patrons.
Ralph Crane, photographer.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
Reynolds Morse, who later, with his wife Eleanor, would become among Dalí’s greatest patrons.
Ralph Crane, photographer.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
This was a decidedly modest comment by Dalí’s standards, especially considering the various scandals and surprises the show held where portraits were concerned. He was outraging the left with his portrait of Ambassador Cárdenas, jolting the smart set with his racy depictions of Dorothy Spreckels and the once-scantily clad Mona Williams, and sending up multi-millionairesses in decidedly undignified depictions. It is no surprise then that the show was wildly anticipated and hugely popular. According to Cowles, “his portrait exhibition . . . started off a clatter of controversy. . . . Eyes popped at every picture during the mob-scene opening; café society talked of little else for a long, long time.”[43] The press also had a field-day, and reviews of the show ranged from admiration of Dalí’s meticulous technique and academic approach, and delight in his saucy caricature, to disappointment with what they considered flat and lifeless characterizations, and distain for the baroque details,
The critic for the New York Times gently suggested that that “specific portraiture, however suppositiously profound, somewhat cramps this artist’s style, which seems to move more freely in a realm of impersonal exaltation.[44] Art Digest claimed that visitors to the show “will find portraiture lifted to an unforgettable plane in these carefully charted and meticulously recorded studies of the Upper Crust” but nevertheless suggests that “One has the idea, on seeing some of these extraordinary examples of fashionable folk surrounded by 'boogey' images, that Dalí must have had his tongue tucked in his cheek."[45] Elsa Maxwell was characteristically more blunt, stating that “In every instance he has reproduced them as serenely beautiful as they are in real life – but with no animation, personality, or thought behind their blank faces,” adding incisively that “Madman or not – Salvador Dalí has good reason to laugh at us who pay so dearly to be ridiculed in oils.”[46] Perhaps the most damning was the review on New York Sun. “There is no exhilaration in the portrayals,” the critic writes, “Nothing but plodding, plodding workmanship and an infinity of detail. So much for so much. Even the attempts to laugh off the money go for nothing. . . . One’s sympathies are all with the artist. So much effort is worthy of better direction.[47]
While critics were largely unimpressed with his offerings at the Knoedler exhibition, the strategy worked: to announce that Dalí was a chic portrait artist in demand by some of the best dressed, most famous and certainly the richest people in America. The unfavourable press in no way stemmed the tide of commissions that flowed his way one whit, and by now the artist had clearly defined his American portrait market. This was largely nouveau riche women, and the occasional man, who had either realized the “American Dream” of rags to riches through sheer hard work, business acumen or intelligence, or by dint of personality, sensuality or good looks, had married money, and wanted to show it off.
The critic for the New York Times gently suggested that that “specific portraiture, however suppositiously profound, somewhat cramps this artist’s style, which seems to move more freely in a realm of impersonal exaltation.[44] Art Digest claimed that visitors to the show “will find portraiture lifted to an unforgettable plane in these carefully charted and meticulously recorded studies of the Upper Crust” but nevertheless suggests that “One has the idea, on seeing some of these extraordinary examples of fashionable folk surrounded by 'boogey' images, that Dalí must have had his tongue tucked in his cheek."[45] Elsa Maxwell was characteristically more blunt, stating that “In every instance he has reproduced them as serenely beautiful as they are in real life – but with no animation, personality, or thought behind their blank faces,” adding incisively that “Madman or not – Salvador Dalí has good reason to laugh at us who pay so dearly to be ridiculed in oils.”[46] Perhaps the most damning was the review on New York Sun. “There is no exhilaration in the portrayals,” the critic writes, “Nothing but plodding, plodding workmanship and an infinity of detail. So much for so much. Even the attempts to laugh off the money go for nothing. . . . One’s sympathies are all with the artist. So much effort is worthy of better direction.[47]
While critics were largely unimpressed with his offerings at the Knoedler exhibition, the strategy worked: to announce that Dalí was a chic portrait artist in demand by some of the best dressed, most famous and certainly the richest people in America. The unfavourable press in no way stemmed the tide of commissions that flowed his way one whit, and by now the artist had clearly defined his American portrait market. This was largely nouveau riche women, and the occasional man, who had either realized the “American Dream” of rags to riches through sheer hard work, business acumen or intelligence, or by dint of personality, sensuality or good looks, had married money, and wanted to show it off.
Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner, 1944.
Oil on canvas, 111.1 x 94.6. cm (43 ¾” x 37 1/5”).
Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, Japan.
Oil on canvas, 111.1 x 94.6. cm (43 ¾” x 37 1/5”).
Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, Japan.
This profile perfectly fit his next subject, Ann Warner, the wife of movie mogul Jack Warner, a subject who also signals Dalí’s next attempted “conquest,” of Hollywood. He was at this time beginning to work with and make the acquaintance of many of the wealthy and celebrated in and around Hollywood and Beverley Hills. Throughout the 1940s, the Dalís stayed frequently in California, which gave them increasing access to Hollywood’s movers and shakers. Dalí also developed an eye for the ladies of the West Coast, telling a journalist for the Call Bulletin in 1941 that he thought “. . . 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.”[47]
While the artist may not have found enthusiastic clients among the actual stars of Hollywood, he became quite friendly with the impresarios, moviemakers, and social convenors who ran the shows and parties of the entertainment industry. This included creative powerhouses such as Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he collaborated with varying degrees of success. Likewise, Dalí and Gala came to know Jack Warner, one of the four of the original Warner Brothers fame, and his wife Ann. The two couples, in fact, became very friendly, and over the next few years, Gala and Dalí would be frequent house guests at the Warner's opulent Beverly Hills home. Correspondence during these years shows that they were so intimate that the Dalís had given nicknames to both Warners. Dalí referred to Jack as the “Petite Marmite,” after a soup he ordered while dining with Dalí in a fine restaurant in Paris, and Ann, likely under Gala's direction, was referred to with the Russian diminutive Annushka.”[48]
While the artist may not have found enthusiastic clients among the actual stars of Hollywood, he became quite friendly with the impresarios, moviemakers, and social convenors who ran the shows and parties of the entertainment industry. This included creative powerhouses such as Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he collaborated with varying degrees of success. Likewise, Dalí and Gala came to know Jack Warner, one of the four of the original Warner Brothers fame, and his wife Ann. The two couples, in fact, became very friendly, and over the next few years, Gala and Dalí would be frequent house guests at the Warner's opulent Beverly Hills home. Correspondence during these years shows that they were so intimate that the Dalís had given nicknames to both Warners. Dalí referred to Jack as the “Petite Marmite,” after a soup he ordered while dining with Dalí in a fine restaurant in Paris, and Ann, likely under Gala's direction, was referred to with the Russian diminutive Annushka.”[48]
Ann Boyer Warner in the 1940s
Some time in the early 1940s, it was decided that Dalí would paint a portrait of Ann, who was Warner's second wife. Born Ann Boyer (1908–1990) this chestnut-haired beauty grew up in a Russian Jewish immigrant family in Ferriday Louisiana. Her father owned the first storefront movie house in her region, and so it seems, the film industry was in her blood. She moved to Hollywood in the 1920s and at sixteen, she met the dashing Spanish-American silent film actor Don Alvarado, whom she married a few years later in 1924. This union produced a daughter, who became the actress known as Joy Page, best known today as the young Bulgarian wife who appears in a scene with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.[49]
Ann’s immersion in Hollywood life eventually led to her meeting Jack Warner, and she soon became his mistress. In his memoir, Warner wrote of their initial meeting that “If there is such a miracle as love at first sight anywhere but in a picture script, then this is what happened to me.”[50] Ann divorced Alvarado in 1932, and after Warner's own divorce from his first wife, Irma Solomons, the two married in 1936. In her role as a spouse of the rich and successful “Petite Marmite,” by all accounts Ann transcended her humble upbringing and fashioned herself into a woman of exceptional taste and charm. In fact, she became one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent tastemakers, widely admired for her personal beauty, her fashion consciousness, as well as her savvy choices in interior design. She also amassed a stunning collection of fine jewels, and in the process became good friends with the Italian jeweller Duke Fulco di Verdura, who also collaborated with Dalí. Ann was likewise an habitué of the Parisian fashion designer Pierre Balmain, whose career she was credited with encouraging. In 1953 he launched a perfume allegedly inspired by her elegance, entitled Jolie Madame.[51]
Ann’s immersion in Hollywood life eventually led to her meeting Jack Warner, and she soon became his mistress. In his memoir, Warner wrote of their initial meeting that “If there is such a miracle as love at first sight anywhere but in a picture script, then this is what happened to me.”[50] Ann divorced Alvarado in 1932, and after Warner's own divorce from his first wife, Irma Solomons, the two married in 1936. In her role as a spouse of the rich and successful “Petite Marmite,” by all accounts Ann transcended her humble upbringing and fashioned herself into a woman of exceptional taste and charm. In fact, she became one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent tastemakers, widely admired for her personal beauty, her fashion consciousness, as well as her savvy choices in interior design. She also amassed a stunning collection of fine jewels, and in the process became good friends with the Italian jeweller Duke Fulco di Verdura, who also collaborated with Dalí. Ann was likewise an habitué of the Parisian fashion designer Pierre Balmain, whose career she was credited with encouraging. In 1953 he launched a perfume allegedly inspired by her elegance, entitled Jolie Madame.[51]
Portrait in original frame hanging in the Warner home, from the collection
of Barbara Warner Howard. Photo: Cass Warner Sperling and Cork Millner,
Hollywood be thy Name (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), n.p.
of Barbara Warner Howard. Photo: Cass Warner Sperling and Cork Millner,
Hollywood be thy Name (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), n.p.
Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s Ann also became a celebrated Hollywood hostess, and even the oft barbed-tongued gossip columnist and professional hostess Elsa Maxwell sang her praises, describing her as a “charming and generous woman who pours out her bounty like the sea. . .”[52] Maxwell was also among the glittering crowd who attended the Warner's much-publicized unveiling of Dalí's portrait of Ann, which took place in early August, 1944, at the couple's Beverly Hills mansion. The American mining heiress Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean was also in attendance, sporting her famous Hope Diamond, as were Mr. and Mrs. Walt Disney, and actors Rosalind Russell and Clark Gable.[53]
In his biography of Jack Warner, Bob Thomas describes an account of the painting’s debut, as recounted to him by the actor Paul Henreid, who was in attendance that evening:
Jack Warner . . . and Ann invited three hundred of Hollywood's upper crust for the unveiling. Tables adorned with fine china and silver and floral sprays sat under brightly coloured umbrellas on the terrace. Through the trees could be seen the sparkling lights of Los Angeles.
Jack Warner greeted the arrivals with quips and banter. Ann Warner drifted among the guests, giving each a warm welcome. Dalí himself commanded attention with his ice-pick moustache and wild eyes. After dinner the shrouded portrait was brought to the terrace, and Jack made a speech about the great Surrealist “who has graciously consented to paint my beautiful wife.”
Jack pulled a string and cloth fell from the portrait. A gasp, then a chorus of “aaahhhhs,” followed by polite applause. The picture of Anne was almost a photographic likeness, portraying her beauty as well as a hint of decadence. Behind her figure was a desolate Dalí expanse and then a green oasis.[54]
In the painting, Ann wears an elegant red off-the-shoulder ruched chiffon dress and chic mid-1940s bouffant. She sits among the “desolate expanse” in which, in keeping with Dalí’s “classic” directive, the artist has placed a highly ornate background populated by two small figures below a blanket of tightly undulating clouds. To the right is a fanciful version of the Acropolis, perched on a remarkably thin rocky outcropping, all slightly crooked. This is an allusion to the Warner’s opulent neoclassical Angelo Drive mansion in Beverly Hills. Designed by architect Roland E. Coate, the façade pays homage to the classic and austere Greek-columned style of the Parthenon.
In the version of the painting reproduced today, the sky and clouds veer off into a pointed centre on top of the canvas, which appears unfinished. However, as period photographs show, this was to accommodate an arched frame that was likely purchased specifically for the work, something that was common for Dalí, who at that time often insisted on, and provided — invariably at great cost — antique frames for his paintings.[55] The work was placed in this unusual frame just after its painting, as it appears in a photograph of the work featured in the November 30, 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar.[56] This frame seems to have guided the dynamics of the picture, in which the movement is decidedly vertical. Similarly unusual for Dalí’s portraits of society women, the subject's posture is extremely upright, as is her curly pompadour, echoed by the vertically elongated Acropolis. Even the rolling clouds seem to ascend, and together, all these elements pull the eye upward toward the centre of the arch.
In his biography of Jack Warner, Bob Thomas describes an account of the painting’s debut, as recounted to him by the actor Paul Henreid, who was in attendance that evening:
Jack Warner . . . and Ann invited three hundred of Hollywood's upper crust for the unveiling. Tables adorned with fine china and silver and floral sprays sat under brightly coloured umbrellas on the terrace. Through the trees could be seen the sparkling lights of Los Angeles.
Jack Warner greeted the arrivals with quips and banter. Ann Warner drifted among the guests, giving each a warm welcome. Dalí himself commanded attention with his ice-pick moustache and wild eyes. After dinner the shrouded portrait was brought to the terrace, and Jack made a speech about the great Surrealist “who has graciously consented to paint my beautiful wife.”
Jack pulled a string and cloth fell from the portrait. A gasp, then a chorus of “aaahhhhs,” followed by polite applause. The picture of Anne was almost a photographic likeness, portraying her beauty as well as a hint of decadence. Behind her figure was a desolate Dalí expanse and then a green oasis.[54]
In the painting, Ann wears an elegant red off-the-shoulder ruched chiffon dress and chic mid-1940s bouffant. She sits among the “desolate expanse” in which, in keeping with Dalí’s “classic” directive, the artist has placed a highly ornate background populated by two small figures below a blanket of tightly undulating clouds. To the right is a fanciful version of the Acropolis, perched on a remarkably thin rocky outcropping, all slightly crooked. This is an allusion to the Warner’s opulent neoclassical Angelo Drive mansion in Beverly Hills. Designed by architect Roland E. Coate, the façade pays homage to the classic and austere Greek-columned style of the Parthenon.
In the version of the painting reproduced today, the sky and clouds veer off into a pointed centre on top of the canvas, which appears unfinished. However, as period photographs show, this was to accommodate an arched frame that was likely purchased specifically for the work, something that was common for Dalí, who at that time often insisted on, and provided — invariably at great cost — antique frames for his paintings.[55] The work was placed in this unusual frame just after its painting, as it appears in a photograph of the work featured in the November 30, 1944 issue of Harper's Bazaar.[56] This frame seems to have guided the dynamics of the picture, in which the movement is decidedly vertical. Similarly unusual for Dalí’s portraits of society women, the subject's posture is extremely upright, as is her curly pompadour, echoed by the vertically elongated Acropolis. Even the rolling clouds seem to ascend, and together, all these elements pull the eye upward toward the centre of the arch.
Schematic study or diagram for Portrait for Mrs. Jack Warner.
Ink on paper, 11 in x 14-1/4, Private Collection.
Ink on paper, 11 in x 14-1/4, Private Collection.
While the portrait is a meticulously rendered likeness, there is a certain unsettling quality about it — perhaps the very thing that garnered only “polite applause” during its unveiling. Although a renowned beauty, Dalí has portrayed Ann Warner as somewhat wan and melancholic, a state made more graphic by the off-kilter Acropolis. The sitter seems isolated in her cavernous surroundings, and her expression hints at ennui or longing. Perhaps Dalí was aware that he had not been her first choice to paint her portrait. According to period reports, Mrs. Warner was quoted as having said that she “wanted a Gainsborough to paint her, but settled for Dalí.”[57] Elsa Maxwell, who thought the world of Ann, was uncharacteristically generous about the work, stating in her column that “the soul of Ann is the most uncommon image to be captured on a piece of canvas . . . apart from being a portrait, it is a work of art that will live.”[58]
Fortuitously, there exists an annotated preparatory drawing, or perhaps a supplementary “map,” which Dalí produced of the work. In it, the artist captions some of the details of the work, focusing on the importance of the subject's coiffure, as well as her elaborate jewels. Indeed the jewels, being one of the things for which Ann was famous, might be considered the main subjects of the work: most notably the Trabert & Hoeffer Mauboussin cabochon emerald brooch, and decidedly conspicuous earrings and ring. Most intriguingly, not appearing in the sketch but only in the original work, is a tiny golden sphinx with red claws, bare breasts, and a woman’s head with long wavy tresses. This was no doubt a Dalínian fantasy, and likely something the artist added as a comment on his subject's love of jewels, not to mention the sphinx-like presence she conveys in the portrait.
Fortuitously, there exists an annotated preparatory drawing, or perhaps a supplementary “map,” which Dalí produced of the work. In it, the artist captions some of the details of the work, focusing on the importance of the subject's coiffure, as well as her elaborate jewels. Indeed the jewels, being one of the things for which Ann was famous, might be considered the main subjects of the work: most notably the Trabert & Hoeffer Mauboussin cabochon emerald brooch, and decidedly conspicuous earrings and ring. Most intriguingly, not appearing in the sketch but only in the original work, is a tiny golden sphinx with red claws, bare breasts, and a woman’s head with long wavy tresses. This was no doubt a Dalínian fantasy, and likely something the artist added as a comment on his subject's love of jewels, not to mention the sphinx-like presence she conveys in the portrait.
Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas / Melancholy, 1945.
Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 86 cm. (25 ½” x 33 ½”).
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 86 cm. (25 ½” x 33 ½”).
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
The subject of Dalí’s next commission was also living in California at the time, but had come from decidedly different circumstances. Of all Dalí’s society portraits this one, entitled Portrait of Isabel Stylter-Tas/Melancholy, is perhaps his best known and most admired. This intriguing work depicts a Dutch multimillionaire who came, with the wave of other European émigrés, to the United States to wait out the war in safety. Born Isabel Tas to a Jewish family in Amsterdam in 1887, she was the daughter of Mathilda Buchenbacher, and Levie (Louis) Tas, one of the period’s best-known diamond brokers in both Europe and North America.[59] The immense wealth her father amassed in the trade won Isabel the nickname “Diamond Wally” among her peers.[60]
Isabel had a succession of husbands, beginning with the much older Hendrik Willem Salomonson (1865-1940), to whom she was married between 1908 and 1917. The couple had two children: Hendrik Willem (Hein) Salomonson, born in 1910, and Emile, born in 1912, who died after his third year.[61] Following the termination of this marriage, Isabel immediately wed a gentleman named Ernest Polak, whom she divorced in 1922.[62] She later moved to Vienna and wed husband number three, Dr. Bernhard “Béla” Panzer. A Poland-born resident of Vienna, Panzer was a well-known physician and patron of the arts who among his circle counted composers Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg, and the muse and socialite Alma Mahler. In the mid-1920s, the couple had two sons, Max Ludwig and Basil Ignaz, and in 1934, Panzer died in a horse-riding accident.
Isabel’s next husband was a maker of high-end picture frames, Maximilian “Max” Welz, who had connections to the Viennese design collective the Wiener Werkstätte.[63] After the Anschluss (when Nazi Germany annexed Austria) in 1939 or early 1940, Isabel fled with Max from Austria to the U.S., bringing her two sons by Panzer. US census records from 1940 state that the family was then living at 812 North Crescent Drive in Beverley Hills, along with their chauffer and cook. Max died in May 1942 of unknown causes.[64]
In America, the sort of wealth and influence a woman like Diamond Wally wielded was naturally a glittering beacon to Dalí and Gala, and it was not long before a portrait commission was secured. Existing correspondence dating from 1944 and 1945 between the Dalís and Isabel (who went by the name Tas-Welz at the time) sheds some light upon the working process. A quick note from Gala to “Mme. Welz” dated February 23, 1944, from Del Monte Lodge states that the Dalís “would be very happy if [their potential patron] were to come . . . for a week after Easter,” presumably to discuss terms, or to begin work on the portrait. In a further letter, Dalí writes that “After our meeting, your portrait has started to become reality in my imagination, and I see it more and more in the tradition of the ‘Renesance’ [sic].” He goes on to state that he will take great pleasure in her visit, and that he was at that time in the middle of painting The Apotheosis of Homer. He also informs Isabel that to finish the portrait, he would need six to eight sittings with her. A later, final note, in Gala’s hand, reports that “Dalí has worked hard and with great success on your portrait. It will be the most perfect thing he has ever done. We hope you will see it in New York.”[65]
Isabel had a succession of husbands, beginning with the much older Hendrik Willem Salomonson (1865-1940), to whom she was married between 1908 and 1917. The couple had two children: Hendrik Willem (Hein) Salomonson, born in 1910, and Emile, born in 1912, who died after his third year.[61] Following the termination of this marriage, Isabel immediately wed a gentleman named Ernest Polak, whom she divorced in 1922.[62] She later moved to Vienna and wed husband number three, Dr. Bernhard “Béla” Panzer. A Poland-born resident of Vienna, Panzer was a well-known physician and patron of the arts who among his circle counted composers Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg, and the muse and socialite Alma Mahler. In the mid-1920s, the couple had two sons, Max Ludwig and Basil Ignaz, and in 1934, Panzer died in a horse-riding accident.
Isabel’s next husband was a maker of high-end picture frames, Maximilian “Max” Welz, who had connections to the Viennese design collective the Wiener Werkstätte.[63] After the Anschluss (when Nazi Germany annexed Austria) in 1939 or early 1940, Isabel fled with Max from Austria to the U.S., bringing her two sons by Panzer. US census records from 1940 state that the family was then living at 812 North Crescent Drive in Beverley Hills, along with their chauffer and cook. Max died in May 1942 of unknown causes.[64]
In America, the sort of wealth and influence a woman like Diamond Wally wielded was naturally a glittering beacon to Dalí and Gala, and it was not long before a portrait commission was secured. Existing correspondence dating from 1944 and 1945 between the Dalís and Isabel (who went by the name Tas-Welz at the time) sheds some light upon the working process. A quick note from Gala to “Mme. Welz” dated February 23, 1944, from Del Monte Lodge states that the Dalís “would be very happy if [their potential patron] were to come . . . for a week after Easter,” presumably to discuss terms, or to begin work on the portrait. In a further letter, Dalí writes that “After our meeting, your portrait has started to become reality in my imagination, and I see it more and more in the tradition of the ‘Renesance’ [sic].” He goes on to state that he will take great pleasure in her visit, and that he was at that time in the middle of painting The Apotheosis of Homer. He also informs Isabel that to finish the portrait, he would need six to eight sittings with her. A later, final note, in Gala’s hand, reports that “Dalí has worked hard and with great success on your portrait. It will be the most perfect thing he has ever done. We hope you will see it in New York.”[65]
Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, 1465 and 1472.
The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas continues to mark the transition between the artist’s Surrealist period and his decision to “go classic.” He was still relying heavily upon “Renesance” references, and notably those of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s witty trompe l’oeil works. A pre-cursor to Surrealism itself, and exemplary of Dalí’s “paranoid critical method” of mentally projecting images on various optical media, Archimboldo’s famous portraits are constructed of fruits, vegetables and all manner of inanimate objects. Dalí has followed suit, echoing Mrs. Styler-Tas’s bust with a mountainous doppelganger. The artist also directly references Piero della Francesca’s famous pendant paintings of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, painted between 1465 and 1472.[66] This adds another layer of meaning to the artist’s portrait work as, instead of an aristocratic pair facing each other, Dalí puts the subject once again in the place that would have traditionally been that of her husband’s.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, second half of the 16th century.
Oil on panel.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Winter, second half of the 16th century.
Oil on panel.
Salvador Dalí painting the portrait of Mrs Isabel Styler-Tas /Melancholy, 1945.
Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2023.
As with Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner, the vertical is highly emphasized in this work, including the extended crutches, the long, hatted silhouettes, and the sitter’s rigid posture. The high fur cap and red coat recall not only the Duke of Urbino’s distinctive red costume, but also the bearskin cap of British military formal dress, while the brooch – a woman’s face transforming into a tree — evokes a badge or insignia. These, combined with Isabel’s regimental posture, suggest a decidedly formidable personality. While the meaning of crutches in Dalí’s work is never completely fixed, in this case these walking aids, transmuting into budding saplings, surely point to his subject’s high social rank. “What are society people?” Dalí asks in The Secret Life, while ruminating upon the necessity of the metaphorical crutch for the privileged class to maintain its superior stance. He likens them to “the group of invalids whose snobbism propped up a decadent aristocracy which still stuck to its traditional attitude.”[67] While Mme Tas-Welz was not a member of the aristocracy, her enormous wealth and top drawer connections evidently put her on the same footing in Dalí’s esteem.
While it is tempting to assume Dalí may merely be parodying his subject’s “decadence” and “traditional attitude,” which would be particularly pronounced in mid-century Beverly Hills, the key to the portrait is perhaps its secondary title, Melancholy. This includes yet another Renaissance reference, this time to German artist Albrecht Dürer, famous for his own work of the same name. This allusion to the subject’s inner landscape reminds the viewer that, despite Isabel’s haughty appearance, she had recently been torn from her home, suffered the loss of her husband, and meanwhile across the ocean, Jews and many others were subject to untold degradations and horrors. The brooding sky above her reinforces this idea of the “dark cloud” of despondency, and Dalí’s decision to add three tear-shaped pearls to her fantastical Surrealist brooch remind us that beneath the sitter’s stony and rigid exterior beats a sorrowful heart.
While it is tempting to assume Dalí may merely be parodying his subject’s “decadence” and “traditional attitude,” which would be particularly pronounced in mid-century Beverly Hills, the key to the portrait is perhaps its secondary title, Melancholy. This includes yet another Renaissance reference, this time to German artist Albrecht Dürer, famous for his own work of the same name. This allusion to the subject’s inner landscape reminds the viewer that, despite Isabel’s haughty appearance, she had recently been torn from her home, suffered the loss of her husband, and meanwhile across the ocean, Jews and many others were subject to untold degradations and horrors. The brooding sky above her reinforces this idea of the “dark cloud” of despondency, and Dalí’s decision to add three tear-shaped pearls to her fantastical Surrealist brooch remind us that beneath the sitter’s stony and rigid exterior beats a sorrowful heart.
Isabel Styler-Tas (right) with Herbert Styler in the 1960s.
While perhaps not, as Gala claims, “the most perfect thing” Dalí had ever done, the artist is at the top of his game in terms of his painting technique and the striking impact of his imagery. While pandering to his patron, his meticulous painting and historical references nevertheless manage to create a work of art that delights the eye and intrigues the viewer. Even Dalí’s harshest critics have warmed to this piece, as did Johnathan Jones, who wrote about it in the Guardian in 2002. Jones describes it as a “typically egregious example of surrealist hackery,” “and yet,” he admits, “you can’t help liking this picture.”[68]
In 1945 in his personal newsletter, the Dalí News, the painter takes great pride in mentioning that, upon return to Europe, “Mme Isabel Tas-Welz . . . is planning to hang her portrait beside a gigantic Tintoretto in her Vienna Home.”[69] Today the work is owned by Berlin’s Staatliches Museum zu Preussischer Kulturbesitz, where its official title is Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas/Melancholy. This was changed from when Dalí painted it as, in the 1950s, Isabel married her fifth husband, one Herbert G. Styler. Twenty-one years her junior, Herbert was the son of a Leipzig art historian, a one-time textile merchant and the former Consul of Thailand. He was also widely believed to be a gay man, which would make theirs a marriage of convenience.[70] The pair apparently had great fun together, and in Germany after the war, Herbert was notorious for throwing magnificent parties (financed by Diamond Wally’s fortune) and dining with the richest and most famous figures of their milieu, including the Windsors, the Khans, and royalty and rank of all kinds. The German periodical Der Spiegel described the former bon vivant as “the doyen of Munich society,” and claimed that he was a style-maker for Germany itself.[71] Numerous society-page photographs of Isabel and Herbert exist, showing the pair enjoying themselves immensely in the most glittering circumstances. Clearly, the period of melancholy Dalí cited in this most extraordinary portrait became a thing of the past for Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas.
In 1945 in his personal newsletter, the Dalí News, the painter takes great pride in mentioning that, upon return to Europe, “Mme Isabel Tas-Welz . . . is planning to hang her portrait beside a gigantic Tintoretto in her Vienna Home.”[69] Today the work is owned by Berlin’s Staatliches Museum zu Preussischer Kulturbesitz, where its official title is Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas/Melancholy. This was changed from when Dalí painted it as, in the 1950s, Isabel married her fifth husband, one Herbert G. Styler. Twenty-one years her junior, Herbert was the son of a Leipzig art historian, a one-time textile merchant and the former Consul of Thailand. He was also widely believed to be a gay man, which would make theirs a marriage of convenience.[70] The pair apparently had great fun together, and in Germany after the war, Herbert was notorious for throwing magnificent parties (financed by Diamond Wally’s fortune) and dining with the richest and most famous figures of their milieu, including the Windsors, the Khans, and royalty and rank of all kinds. The German periodical Der Spiegel described the former bon vivant as “the doyen of Munich society,” and claimed that he was a style-maker for Germany itself.[71] Numerous society-page photographs of Isabel and Herbert exist, showing the pair enjoying themselves immensely in the most glittering circumstances. Clearly, the period of melancholy Dalí cited in this most extraordinary portrait became a thing of the past for Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas.
* * * * * * *
That Dalí remained interested in maintaining a profile as a portraitist is something he makes clear in what might be described in contemporary terms as his “personal newsletter.” This was a publication he released entitled The Dalí News, qualified as the “Monarch of the Dailies,” and produced by the “Dalí Mirror Incorporated.” Rambling and eclectic, these were promotional novelties for distribution at his exhibitions, and he produced one in November 1945, and another in November 1947. In the first issue, Dalí writes of the “Next Exposition of the Latest Portraits by Dalí,” and gives an update of the current state of his portrait endeavors in the form of a descriptive list of several completed, in-progress, and potential future commissions.
The proposed show was intended to include his portrait of Isabel Styler-Tas (then Tas-Welz), and those of Mrs. Hans Arnhold, the Marquis de Cuevas, Mrs. Harrison Williams, and of Ann Warner, a work which, he writes, “has already become famous in Californian mithology [sic]. He also mentions his portrait of Mrs. George Gregory, which was not completed until 1948, and other works that have not been confirmed to have been painted. These are a miniature on ivory of the Bolivian Tin baron Antenor Patiño, and “the little daughter of Mrs. Hughes,” whose identity has yet to be verified. Two works Dalí was apparently negotiating were “The one of Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean with all the phantasmagoria of her famous ‘Hope’ diamond,” and a “portrait of Cary Grant with a fowling piece in his hand, against a background of an English autumnal forest.” [72] Neither of these are known to have been painted, and the proposed portrait exhibition also never came about.
The proposed show was intended to include his portrait of Isabel Styler-Tas (then Tas-Welz), and those of Mrs. Hans Arnhold, the Marquis de Cuevas, Mrs. Harrison Williams, and of Ann Warner, a work which, he writes, “has already become famous in Californian mithology [sic]. He also mentions his portrait of Mrs. George Gregory, which was not completed until 1948, and other works that have not been confirmed to have been painted. These are a miniature on ivory of the Bolivian Tin baron Antenor Patiño, and “the little daughter of Mrs. Hughes,” whose identity has yet to be verified. Two works Dalí was apparently negotiating were “The one of Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean with all the phantasmagoria of her famous ‘Hope’ diamond,” and a “portrait of Cary Grant with a fowling piece in his hand, against a background of an English autumnal forest.” [72] Neither of these are known to have been painted, and the proposed portrait exhibition also never came about.
Composition: Portrait of Luli Kollsman, 1946.
Oil on canvas, 77 x 92 cm (30.31" x 36.22"), signed and dated lower right:
“Salvador Dalí 1946,” again lower left at a later date, “Dalí.”
Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma.
Oil on canvas, 77 x 92 cm (30.31" x 36.22"), signed and dated lower right:
“Salvador Dalí 1946,” again lower left at a later date, “Dalí.”
Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma.
One Hollywood star Dalí did have the opportunity to paint was the German-born Julie (“Luli”) Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen (1902-1951), who went by the stage name Luli Deste. Working in her native Germany, as well as Austria and England, she moved to California in 1937 to join Columbia Pictures. Her acting career lasted a decade, during which time she appeared in a small number of films of varying merit, from My Friend the King, starring Jerry Verno (1931) to an episode of the popular sci-fi classic Flash Gordon (1940). A lover of the great outdoors, when the actress arrived in California, she immediately purchased a large historic ranch in the foothills three miles west of Canoga Park, Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley region. [73]
Deste was married three times. First in 1922 to Gottfried Baron von Meyern-Hohenberg, and second, in America in 1940, to the industrial designer Albrecht Graf von Goertz. Having finished with acting in 1941, her career took many directions, as described by Sterling North in the New York World Telegram in 1949. “From a $5000-a-week job in Hollywood,” he writes, “she slipped to poverty, tried to make a comeback by designing custom-built cars, ran a garage and a taxi service, was a filling-station attendant, married a very wealthy man, and is now busily writing three novels, one of which Dalí is illustrating.” North notes that “She is far more proud of the first 25-cent tip she earned as a taxi driver than of her wide friendship with the aristocracy of Europe.”[74]
The “very wealthy man” she married in 1944 was the German-American Paul Kollsman (1901-1982), an inventor known primarily for devising the barometric altimeter, an innovative instrument for measuring air pressure in aircraft, important for making night flights possible. Once married, the couple bought and lived in a sprawling Mediterranean-style mansion in Beverley Hills designed by Wallace Neff, which was known as the Enchanted Hill. Luli also kept an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and it was here that she hung Dalí's portrait.[75] Using the last name Kollsman, Luli wrote a romantic novel set in New York, entitled, Come, Take my Hand published in 1949.[76] The other novels she was apparently working on, including the stated collaboration with Dalí, did not materialize, perhaps because she died at age forty-eight of cancer, just five years after Dalí painted her portrait. After Luli died, Kollsman re-married a younger woman who died in 2005. Called Eva, she is notable here because Dalí's portrait of Luli is often misidentified as being of Eva Kollsman.
Deste was married three times. First in 1922 to Gottfried Baron von Meyern-Hohenberg, and second, in America in 1940, to the industrial designer Albrecht Graf von Goertz. Having finished with acting in 1941, her career took many directions, as described by Sterling North in the New York World Telegram in 1949. “From a $5000-a-week job in Hollywood,” he writes, “she slipped to poverty, tried to make a comeback by designing custom-built cars, ran a garage and a taxi service, was a filling-station attendant, married a very wealthy man, and is now busily writing three novels, one of which Dalí is illustrating.” North notes that “She is far more proud of the first 25-cent tip she earned as a taxi driver than of her wide friendship with the aristocracy of Europe.”[74]
The “very wealthy man” she married in 1944 was the German-American Paul Kollsman (1901-1982), an inventor known primarily for devising the barometric altimeter, an innovative instrument for measuring air pressure in aircraft, important for making night flights possible. Once married, the couple bought and lived in a sprawling Mediterranean-style mansion in Beverley Hills designed by Wallace Neff, which was known as the Enchanted Hill. Luli also kept an apartment at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and it was here that she hung Dalí's portrait.[75] Using the last name Kollsman, Luli wrote a romantic novel set in New York, entitled, Come, Take my Hand published in 1949.[76] The other novels she was apparently working on, including the stated collaboration with Dalí, did not materialize, perhaps because she died at age forty-eight of cancer, just five years after Dalí painted her portrait. After Luli died, Kollsman re-married a younger woman who died in 2005. Called Eva, she is notable here because Dalí's portrait of Luli is often misidentified as being of Eva Kollsman.
Ravel's Bolero, 1946. Oil on canvas. 36 x 23.8 cm (14.17” x 9.44”). Private collection.
Composition has an unusual title for a Dalí portrait, and is also remarkable because the subject is so small. The painting is, however, in keeping with other works the artist produced that same year, many of which were commercial, and which feature desolate, desert-like landscapes that draw more on the imagery of the American Southwest than they do his habitual Cadaqués settings. Works in this vein are populated by Spanish dancing figures and indigenous animals, strewn with rocks, desert flora and other natural objects, and frequently include a rounded, ruined Roman arch. As such, the portrait is easily compared to Dalí’s 1946 Ravel’s Bolero, commissioned by the Capehart Corporation, a manufacturer of phonographs and radios. Others include three paintings from a series known as the “Trilogy of the Desert,” commissioned to promote Leigh Desert Flower perfume, as well as some of the preparatory drawings the artist produced for the never-realized (at least during Dalí’s lifetime) Disney cartoon, Destino.
From Dalí's “Trilogy of the Desert." Invisible Lovers, 1946.
Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 60 cm (14.17" x 23.62"), Private collection.
Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 60 cm (14.17" x 23.62"), Private collection.
Quite possibly, Luli herself requested that Dalí depict her in a large, open expanse. In an interview in 1937 when the actress bought her San Fernando Valley ranch, she was quoted as saying how much she loved the outdoors. “Born and reared in the ‘wide open spaces,’” she said, “I had to get out in the country. I’ve looked the valley over from corner to corner and know it like a book. But this old foothill estate is the most beautiful I’ve found.”[77] That Dalí has depicted Deste in casual clothing, with a scarf around her neck and a “ranch hand” rope holding up her blue jeans, suggests he was drawing on the private, “country” side of Luli’s life, rather than that of the elegant actress the public would recognize.
A reference to California’s rural spaces would also explain the presence of the deer and the snake in the work which, like the stone wild boar’s head atop the ruined arch, were common in the region. The two dogs are closer to home, as a photograph of Luli and Paul early in their marriage shows them with their canines outside their home. In the photograph these appear to be a Shih Tzu and a Borzoi however, not the Afghan in the foreground of the painting, nor what looks to be a black Schnauzer or Labrador poking its nose from the left side of the canvas.[78] The inclusion of the ruins might also refer to the very fresh destruction of WWII. In the same year the picture was painted, Luli and Paul visited Paul's native town of Freudenstadt, in the Black Forest, to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. The region had been heavily destroyed during the war, and Paul was heartbroken to see the local market place, with its famous arcades, in ruins [79].
Dalí has also embedded his familiar cavalier, dressed in red upon a rearing white horse, which in this context might well be a reference to the many saddle-horses Luli had on her ranch. Mrs. Kollsman’s waving gesture seems to have been taken from a publicity photograph of the actress taken in the 1930s, and behind her is a second figure whose curved posture mirrors her own.
A reference to California’s rural spaces would also explain the presence of the deer and the snake in the work which, like the stone wild boar’s head atop the ruined arch, were common in the region. The two dogs are closer to home, as a photograph of Luli and Paul early in their marriage shows them with their canines outside their home. In the photograph these appear to be a Shih Tzu and a Borzoi however, not the Afghan in the foreground of the painting, nor what looks to be a black Schnauzer or Labrador poking its nose from the left side of the canvas.[78] The inclusion of the ruins might also refer to the very fresh destruction of WWII. In the same year the picture was painted, Luli and Paul visited Paul's native town of Freudenstadt, in the Black Forest, to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. The region had been heavily destroyed during the war, and Paul was heartbroken to see the local market place, with its famous arcades, in ruins [79].
Dalí has also embedded his familiar cavalier, dressed in red upon a rearing white horse, which in this context might well be a reference to the many saddle-horses Luli had on her ranch. Mrs. Kollsman’s waving gesture seems to have been taken from a publicity photograph of the actress taken in the 1930s, and behind her is a second figure whose curved posture mirrors her own.
|
|
Left: Publicity photograph of Luli Deste, 1930s.
Right: Luli wears a dress of spun glass
Right: Luli wears a dress of spun glass
Luli with one of her three black Afghan hounds
The Central New Jersey Home News, February 11, 1937, page 7
The Central New Jersey Home News, February 11, 1937, page 7
Two letters concerning this painting survive in the Gala-Dalí Foundation archives, and shed some light on the composition, as well as upon Dalí’s working process. In one letter from Luli to the Dalís, dated July 16, 1946, the actress responds to the news that the portrait is finished. “The picture is done!” she exclaims, “What good news. But don’t you need me at all to finish it? And Torro – my husband who was supposed to appear in the picture? You only saw him once. . . . I am bursting with curiosity to see the picture and am sure it will be very interesting.”[80] Not surprisingly this letter reflects Dalí’s insistence that his clients never see his portraits until they were finished. It also corroborates his habit of working from photographs, as he clearly did not require his subject’s presence to complete the work. Finally, the letter reveals that Luli’s husband, whom she affectionately refers to as “Torro,” was meant to appear in the work, thus making Composition a double portrait. Considering this, it is possible that the tiny figure in the background, in red (although decidedly effeminate), or the mounted cavalier, were mean to represent the elusive Torro.
Adding further to the mystery of the painting is an odd second letter from Luli, dated April 22, 1947. In it, she writes, “My dear Gala: Sweet of you to write me and lovely of Dalí to change the picture.” After a few sentences discussing her husband being very ill, and then recovering, she then writes “Gala – the fact remains! Lots of people will find all kinds of explanations but the fact remains! He was well the day the picture was changed and his recovery was so sudden and inexplicable that even the doctors could not understand it.”[81] These comments suggest that Mrs. Kollsman superstitiously felt that there was some Dorian Gray-like power to the portrait that seems to have directly affected her husband’s health. It also suggests that changes have been made to the work, the absence or alteration of which might help explain some of the seeming awkwardness of the composition. At very least, it may clarify why the work was signed twice, as described by the Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma: once during the inception, and again at a later date. As in his later Portrait of a Man, Dalí likely signed the work a second time after making alterations. Intriguingly, the mystery as to what these were might only be solved by taking an X-Ray of the canvas.
Adding further to the mystery of the painting is an odd second letter from Luli, dated April 22, 1947. In it, she writes, “My dear Gala: Sweet of you to write me and lovely of Dalí to change the picture.” After a few sentences discussing her husband being very ill, and then recovering, she then writes “Gala – the fact remains! Lots of people will find all kinds of explanations but the fact remains! He was well the day the picture was changed and his recovery was so sudden and inexplicable that even the doctors could not understand it.”[81] These comments suggest that Mrs. Kollsman superstitiously felt that there was some Dorian Gray-like power to the portrait that seems to have directly affected her husband’s health. It also suggests that changes have been made to the work, the absence or alteration of which might help explain some of the seeming awkwardness of the composition. At very least, it may clarify why the work was signed twice, as described by the Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma: once during the inception, and again at a later date. As in his later Portrait of a Man, Dalí likely signed the work a second time after making alterations. Intriguingly, the mystery as to what these were might only be solved by taking an X-Ray of the canvas.
ENDNOTES
[1] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 267.
[2] “Foreign Embassies in the U.S. and their Ambassadors,” Diplomatic Representation for the Kingdom of Spain, U.S. Department of State website, accessed April 2, 2014, http://www.state.gov/s/cpr/94445.htm; “Cárdenas y Rodríguez de Rivas, Juan Francisco de (1881-1966),” MCM Biografías, accessed April 28, 2015, http://www.mcnbiografias.com/app-bio/do/show?key=Cárdenas-y-rodriguez-de-rivas-juan-francisco-de.
[3] See Juan Francisco De Cárdenas, Hispanic Culture and Language in the United States (New York: Instituto De Las Espanas, 1933).
[4] Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez, Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature (Albequerque New Mexico: UNM Press, 2003), 163.
[5] See Carroll Carstairs, Loan Exhibitions of Paintings by Goya under the Patronage of His Excellency Senor Don Juan Francisco De Cárdenas, Spanish Ambassador, exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler and Company, 1934).
[6] Staff writer, “Diplomatic Beauty: Senora de Cárdenas,” photograph caption for image in The Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1932, 2.
[7] Gala-Salvador Dalí archive. The letterhead reads Wickes, Riddell, Bloomer, Jacobi and McGuire, 60 Broadway, NY.
[8] Dalí, The Secret Life, 384.
[9] Dalí, The Secret Life, 391.
[10] Salvador Dalí, Dalí on Modern Art: The Cuckolds of Antiquated Modern Art (New York: Dover, 1996), 58.
[11] William Jeffett “The Artist and the Dictator: Salvador Dalí and General Franco,” The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 130; Carolyn Bell, “Spain’s Ambassador Sits for his Portrait by Dalí,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1943, n.p.
[12] James Morris, Spain (London: Faber & Faber, 1964), 29.
[13] Javier Berzal, “Velazquez, The Surrender of Breda,” Khan Academy online, accessed April 2, 2015, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy-enlightenment/baroque-art1/spain/a/velzquez-the-surrender-of-breda.
[14] Jeffett, “The Artist and the Dictator,” 130.
[15] Jeffett, 131.
[16] André Breton [1943], “Situation of Surrealism between the Two Wars,” in What is Surrealism? Selected Writings (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), 243.
[17] Etherington-Smith, 272.
[18] Inez Robb, “Dalí’s Daffy Day,” American Weekly, October 8, 1941, 7.
[19] Fleur Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company 1959), 144.
[20] Uncited obituary for Mona Bismarck, July 1983, clippings file in archives of The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.
[21] Emily Genauer, New York World-Telegram, Saturday, April 17, 1943, n.p.
[22] Mark Brown, Salvador Dalí portrait of Mona Bismarck up for auction at Sotheby's, The Guardian, January 27, 2013, accessed May 21, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/salvador-Dalí-portrait-mona-bismarck-auction.
[23] Manuel del Arco, Dalí in the Nude, First English Edition (Florida: Dalí Museum, 1984), 110.
[24] Staff writer, “Rapport of Fatality,” Newsweek, April 26, 1943, 82.
[25] Salvador Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí (New York: William and Morrow Company, Inc. 1976), 205.
[26] Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions, 204.
[27] Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions, 205.
[28] Maxene Fabe, Beauty Millionaire: The Life of Helena Rubinstein (New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 1972), 126.
[29] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 225.
[30] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 225.
[31] Staff writer, The Los Angeles Examiner, May 11, 1952, n.p.
[32] Helena Rubinstein, My Life for Beauty (New York: Paperback Library Edition, 1972), 91.
[33] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 224.
[34] Patrick O’Higgins, Madame: An Intimate Portrait of Helena Rubinstein (New York: Viking Press, 1971), adjacent to page 15.
[35] Rubinstein, My Life for Beauty, 91.
[36] Staff writer, Look Magazine, May 12, 1950, 110.
[37] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 287.
[38] “Mount Rushmore National Memorial,” CyArk website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://archive.cyark.org/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-intro.
[39] New York Sun, April 16, 1943, n.p. As quoted in Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, 423, n. 78.
[40] Elsa Maxwell, “Elsa Maxwell’s Weekend Roundup,” The New York Post, August 12 1944, n.p.
[41] Salvador Dalí, “Dalí to the Reader,” Dalí, exh. cat., M. Knoedler and Company, Inc., (New York, Art Aid Corporation, 1943), 2.
[42] Dalí, “Dalí to the Reader,” 2.
[43] Cowles, 227.
[44] Staff writer, New York Times, April 18, 1943, n.p.
[45] H.B., “Done the Dalí Way,” Art Digest, April 15, 1943, n.p
[46] Elsa Maxwell, Dalí-ing with Democracy, “Elsa Maxwell’s Particles,” Washington Times-Herald, April 24, 1943, n.p.
[47] Anon., New York Sun, 16 April, 1943, as quoted in Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (London: Faber and Faber, 1997, 423.
[48] Marie Hicks Davidson, “Sur-realism ‘Sincere Art’: Dalí’”, The Call Bulletin, Aug 27, 1941, n.p.
[49] Collection of letters between Jack Warner and Salvador Dalí, 1946-1949, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archive, Figueres, Spain. Fleur Cowles recorded Warner’s explanation of the Warner’s nickname, writing “Years ago, when dining with Dalí in Paris on Warner’s first visit there, Warner looked at the impressive La Tour d’Argent menu. He ordered the only thing he recognized in French. ‘From that time on, Dalí (who still has almost as much trouble with English as I have with French) has called me Petite Marmite.’” Cowles, 230, fn. 1.
[50] See Bob Thomas, Clown Prince of Hollywood: The Antic Life and Times of Jack L. Warner (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990).
[51] As quoted in Magnificent Jewels, Sotheby’s, New York, April 14, 2011, auction catalogue, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2011/magnificent-jewels-n08732.html.
[52] Myrna Oliver, “Ann Warner; Widow of Hollywood Movie Mogul,” obituary, Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1990, accessed May 19, 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-10/news/mn-1712_1_ann-warner.[1] Elsa Maxwell, “Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up,” New York Post, August 12, 1944. n.p.
[53] Maxwell, Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up, n.p. It should be noted that Dalí, in attendance with Gala, likely attempted to garner further portrait commissions during the event, and surely had some interest from Walsh McLean, as the artist was to advertise possible forthcoming portraits in his personal newsletter, the Dalí News, of 1945. See Salvador Dalí, Dalí News: Monarch of the Dailies (Dalí Mirror Incorporated), Tuesday, November 1945, 4. At the end of a long paragraph describing recent commissions that were to be showcased at his upcoming show, Dalí writes, “At the last moment it is possible that two new paintings will be included. The one of Mrs. Evelyn (sic) Walsh McLean with all the phantasmagoria of her famous ‘Hope’ diamond, and a portrait of Cary Grant with a fowling piece in his hand, against a background of an English autumnal forest.” This commission was never realized, perhaps as Walsh-McLean died in April of 1947.
[54] Thomas, Clown Prince of Hollywood, 162, 296.
[55] See Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 229-230, for Reynolds Morse’s discussion of Dalí’s insistence on antique frames of his own choosing.
[56] The November 30th, 1944 issue of Harper’s Bazaar features a full-page colour photograph of the work showing a substantial part of the frame, which is gilt with acanthus scrolls pointing upward on each side toward the centre arch.
[57] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 263.
[58] Maxwell, Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up, n.p.
[59] “Persoonskaart Caroline Büchenbacher,” Genealogie voor oost Nederland website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.pondes.nl/detail/i_d.php?inum=11888127.
[60] Staff writer, “Herbert G. Stiehler,” obituary, Der Spiegel, no. 29, August 9, 1982, 160.
[61] “Salomonson, Hendrik Willem (Hein) 1910 – 1994,” Database Joods Biografisch Woordenboeck, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.jodeninnederland.nl/id/P-1107.
[62] “Stamboom Van Traa: Isabella Tas,” Genealogueonline, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-van-traa/I1347.php.
[63] “Max Welz Frames Vienna,” Patrick Kovacs Kunsthandel website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.patrick-kovacs.at/biografien/max-welz.html.
[64] This house was later inhabited by director Vincente Minnelli. See “Seeing Stars: Where the Stars Live,” The Robinson Estate and Gardens website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.seeing-stars.com/Live/RobinsonEstate.shtml.
[65] Correspondence with Del Monte Lodge letterhead as posted in auction listings for Piasa auction house, Paris, and Inlibris auction house, Austria, accessed July 3, 2014, http://www.piasa.fr/FR/vente_livres_autographes/v8779_piasa/l1161626_gala_Dalí_2_pebble_beach_california_1946_1947_isabel_tas_welz_beverly_hills.html; http://www.inlibris.at/content/deutsch/bestand/search.php?term=gedr&sentence=&actpage=30&order.
[66] Dawn Ades, Dalí (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 98.
[67] Dalí, The Secret Life, 260.
[68] Jones, Jonathan, “Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas, Salvador Dalí (1945),” The Guardian, November 9, 2002, accessed May 19, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/nov/09/art.http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/nov/09/art
[69] Dalí, Dalí News, 4.
[70] Styler, Herbert C. (d.i.: Stiehler, Herbert Georg) in Nicolai Clarus, Mann für Mann: biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte von Freundesliebe und mannmännlicher Sexualität im deutschen Sprachraum B.-U. Hergemöller (Hrsg), Vol. 1, (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2010), 1154-1156.
[71] Peter Von Brügge, “Die Reichen in Deutschland,” Der Spiegel, no. 39, August 19, 1966, 95; Staff writer, “Herbert G. Stiehler,” obituary, Der Spiegel, no. 29, August 9, 1982, 160.
[72] Salvador Dalí, Next Exposition of the Latest Portraits by Dalí,” Dalí News: Monarch of the Dailies (Dalí Mirror Incorporated), Tuesday November 20, 1945, p. 4.
[73] Staff writer, “Luli Deste to Make Permanent Home of Huge Old Estate,” uncited period newspaper, n.p. in “Luli (Julie) Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen,” Schloss Neubeuern & Familie Miller website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.gaestebuecher-schloss-neubeuern.de/biografien/Bodenhausen_Luli_Baronin_von_Schauspielerin_Schriftstellerin.pdf.
[74] Sterling North, “Sterling North Reviews the Books,” New York World-Telegram, October 14, 1949, n.p.
[75] Juan Manuel Bonet, “Salvador Dalí, Composición, 1946,” Salvador Dalí, Museu Fondació Juan March, Madrid, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.march.es/arte/palma/coleccion/artistas/salvador-Dalí.aspx?l=2.
[76] See Luli Kollsman, Come, Take my Hand (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1949).
[78] Staff writer, “Luli Deste to Make Permanent Home of Huge Old Estate.”
[79] “Luli (Julie) Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen,” Schloss Neubeuern & Familie Miller website.
[80] Letter from Luli Kollsman to the Dalís, July 16, 1946, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archives, Figueres, Spain.
[81] Letter from Luli Kollsman to the Dalís, April 22, 1947, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archives, Figueres, Spain.
[1] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 267.
[2] “Foreign Embassies in the U.S. and their Ambassadors,” Diplomatic Representation for the Kingdom of Spain, U.S. Department of State website, accessed April 2, 2014, http://www.state.gov/s/cpr/94445.htm; “Cárdenas y Rodríguez de Rivas, Juan Francisco de (1881-1966),” MCM Biografías, accessed April 28, 2015, http://www.mcnbiografias.com/app-bio/do/show?key=Cárdenas-y-rodriguez-de-rivas-juan-francisco-de.
[3] See Juan Francisco De Cárdenas, Hispanic Culture and Language in the United States (New York: Instituto De Las Espanas, 1933).
[4] Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez, Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature (Albequerque New Mexico: UNM Press, 2003), 163.
[5] See Carroll Carstairs, Loan Exhibitions of Paintings by Goya under the Patronage of His Excellency Senor Don Juan Francisco De Cárdenas, Spanish Ambassador, exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler and Company, 1934).
[6] Staff writer, “Diplomatic Beauty: Senora de Cárdenas,” photograph caption for image in The Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1932, 2.
[7] Gala-Salvador Dalí archive. The letterhead reads Wickes, Riddell, Bloomer, Jacobi and McGuire, 60 Broadway, NY.
[8] Dalí, The Secret Life, 384.
[9] Dalí, The Secret Life, 391.
[10] Salvador Dalí, Dalí on Modern Art: The Cuckolds of Antiquated Modern Art (New York: Dover, 1996), 58.
[11] William Jeffett “The Artist and the Dictator: Salvador Dalí and General Franco,” The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 130; Carolyn Bell, “Spain’s Ambassador Sits for his Portrait by Dalí,” The Washington Post, November 16, 1943, n.p.
[12] James Morris, Spain (London: Faber & Faber, 1964), 29.
[13] Javier Berzal, “Velazquez, The Surrender of Breda,” Khan Academy online, accessed April 2, 2015, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy-enlightenment/baroque-art1/spain/a/velzquez-the-surrender-of-breda.
[14] Jeffett, “The Artist and the Dictator,” 130.
[15] Jeffett, 131.
[16] André Breton [1943], “Situation of Surrealism between the Two Wars,” in What is Surrealism? Selected Writings (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), 243.
[17] Etherington-Smith, 272.
[18] Inez Robb, “Dalí’s Daffy Day,” American Weekly, October 8, 1941, 7.
[19] Fleur Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company 1959), 144.
[20] Uncited obituary for Mona Bismarck, July 1983, clippings file in archives of The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.
[21] Emily Genauer, New York World-Telegram, Saturday, April 17, 1943, n.p.
[22] Mark Brown, Salvador Dalí portrait of Mona Bismarck up for auction at Sotheby's, The Guardian, January 27, 2013, accessed May 21, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/salvador-Dalí-portrait-mona-bismarck-auction.
[23] Manuel del Arco, Dalí in the Nude, First English Edition (Florida: Dalí Museum, 1984), 110.
[24] Staff writer, “Rapport of Fatality,” Newsweek, April 26, 1943, 82.
[25] Salvador Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí (New York: William and Morrow Company, Inc. 1976), 205.
[26] Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions, 204.
[27] Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions, 205.
[28] Maxene Fabe, Beauty Millionaire: The Life of Helena Rubinstein (New York: Thomas Crowell Company, 1972), 126.
[29] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 225.
[30] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 225.
[31] Staff writer, The Los Angeles Examiner, May 11, 1952, n.p.
[32] Helena Rubinstein, My Life for Beauty (New York: Paperback Library Edition, 1972), 91.
[33] Cowles, The Case of Salvador Dalí, 224.
[34] Patrick O’Higgins, Madame: An Intimate Portrait of Helena Rubinstein (New York: Viking Press, 1971), adjacent to page 15.
[35] Rubinstein, My Life for Beauty, 91.
[36] Staff writer, Look Magazine, May 12, 1950, 110.
[37] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 287.
[38] “Mount Rushmore National Memorial,” CyArk website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://archive.cyark.org/mount-rushmore-national-memorial-intro.
[39] New York Sun, April 16, 1943, n.p. As quoted in Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, 423, n. 78.
[40] Elsa Maxwell, “Elsa Maxwell’s Weekend Roundup,” The New York Post, August 12 1944, n.p.
[41] Salvador Dalí, “Dalí to the Reader,” Dalí, exh. cat., M. Knoedler and Company, Inc., (New York, Art Aid Corporation, 1943), 2.
[42] Dalí, “Dalí to the Reader,” 2.
[43] Cowles, 227.
[44] Staff writer, New York Times, April 18, 1943, n.p.
[45] H.B., “Done the Dalí Way,” Art Digest, April 15, 1943, n.p
[46] Elsa Maxwell, Dalí-ing with Democracy, “Elsa Maxwell’s Particles,” Washington Times-Herald, April 24, 1943, n.p.
[47] Anon., New York Sun, 16 April, 1943, as quoted in Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (London: Faber and Faber, 1997, 423.
[48] Marie Hicks Davidson, “Sur-realism ‘Sincere Art’: Dalí’”, The Call Bulletin, Aug 27, 1941, n.p.
[49] Collection of letters between Jack Warner and Salvador Dalí, 1946-1949, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archive, Figueres, Spain. Fleur Cowles recorded Warner’s explanation of the Warner’s nickname, writing “Years ago, when dining with Dalí in Paris on Warner’s first visit there, Warner looked at the impressive La Tour d’Argent menu. He ordered the only thing he recognized in French. ‘From that time on, Dalí (who still has almost as much trouble with English as I have with French) has called me Petite Marmite.’” Cowles, 230, fn. 1.
[50] See Bob Thomas, Clown Prince of Hollywood: The Antic Life and Times of Jack L. Warner (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990).
[51] As quoted in Magnificent Jewels, Sotheby’s, New York, April 14, 2011, auction catalogue, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2011/magnificent-jewels-n08732.html.
[52] Myrna Oliver, “Ann Warner; Widow of Hollywood Movie Mogul,” obituary, Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1990, accessed May 19, 2015, http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-10/news/mn-1712_1_ann-warner.[1] Elsa Maxwell, “Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up,” New York Post, August 12, 1944. n.p.
[53] Maxwell, Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up, n.p. It should be noted that Dalí, in attendance with Gala, likely attempted to garner further portrait commissions during the event, and surely had some interest from Walsh McLean, as the artist was to advertise possible forthcoming portraits in his personal newsletter, the Dalí News, of 1945. See Salvador Dalí, Dalí News: Monarch of the Dailies (Dalí Mirror Incorporated), Tuesday, November 1945, 4. At the end of a long paragraph describing recent commissions that were to be showcased at his upcoming show, Dalí writes, “At the last moment it is possible that two new paintings will be included. The one of Mrs. Evelyn (sic) Walsh McLean with all the phantasmagoria of her famous ‘Hope’ diamond, and a portrait of Cary Grant with a fowling piece in his hand, against a background of an English autumnal forest.” This commission was never realized, perhaps as Walsh-McLean died in April of 1947.
[54] Thomas, Clown Prince of Hollywood, 162, 296.
[55] See Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 229-230, for Reynolds Morse’s discussion of Dalí’s insistence on antique frames of his own choosing.
[56] The November 30th, 1944 issue of Harper’s Bazaar features a full-page colour photograph of the work showing a substantial part of the frame, which is gilt with acanthus scrolls pointing upward on each side toward the centre arch.
[57] Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of Memory, 263.
[58] Maxwell, Elsa Maxwell's Week-End Round-up, n.p.
[59] “Persoonskaart Caroline Büchenbacher,” Genealogie voor oost Nederland website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.pondes.nl/detail/i_d.php?inum=11888127.
[60] Staff writer, “Herbert G. Stiehler,” obituary, Der Spiegel, no. 29, August 9, 1982, 160.
[61] “Salomonson, Hendrik Willem (Hein) 1910 – 1994,” Database Joods Biografisch Woordenboeck, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.jodeninnederland.nl/id/P-1107.
[62] “Stamboom Van Traa: Isabella Tas,” Genealogueonline, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-van-traa/I1347.php.
[63] “Max Welz Frames Vienna,” Patrick Kovacs Kunsthandel website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.patrick-kovacs.at/biografien/max-welz.html.
[64] This house was later inhabited by director Vincente Minnelli. See “Seeing Stars: Where the Stars Live,” The Robinson Estate and Gardens website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.seeing-stars.com/Live/RobinsonEstate.shtml.
[65] Correspondence with Del Monte Lodge letterhead as posted in auction listings for Piasa auction house, Paris, and Inlibris auction house, Austria, accessed July 3, 2014, http://www.piasa.fr/FR/vente_livres_autographes/v8779_piasa/l1161626_gala_Dalí_2_pebble_beach_california_1946_1947_isabel_tas_welz_beverly_hills.html; http://www.inlibris.at/content/deutsch/bestand/search.php?term=gedr&sentence=&actpage=30&order.
[66] Dawn Ades, Dalí (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 98.
[67] Dalí, The Secret Life, 260.
[68] Jones, Jonathan, “Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas, Salvador Dalí (1945),” The Guardian, November 9, 2002, accessed May 19, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/nov/09/art.http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/nov/09/art
[69] Dalí, Dalí News, 4.
[70] Styler, Herbert C. (d.i.: Stiehler, Herbert Georg) in Nicolai Clarus, Mann für Mann: biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte von Freundesliebe und mannmännlicher Sexualität im deutschen Sprachraum B.-U. Hergemöller (Hrsg), Vol. 1, (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2010), 1154-1156.
[71] Peter Von Brügge, “Die Reichen in Deutschland,” Der Spiegel, no. 39, August 19, 1966, 95; Staff writer, “Herbert G. Stiehler,” obituary, Der Spiegel, no. 29, August 9, 1982, 160.
[72] Salvador Dalí, Next Exposition of the Latest Portraits by Dalí,” Dalí News: Monarch of the Dailies (Dalí Mirror Incorporated), Tuesday November 20, 1945, p. 4.
[73] Staff writer, “Luli Deste to Make Permanent Home of Huge Old Estate,” uncited period newspaper, n.p. in “Luli (Julie) Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen,” Schloss Neubeuern & Familie Miller website, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.gaestebuecher-schloss-neubeuern.de/biografien/Bodenhausen_Luli_Baronin_von_Schauspielerin_Schriftstellerin.pdf.
[74] Sterling North, “Sterling North Reviews the Books,” New York World-Telegram, October 14, 1949, n.p.
[75] Juan Manuel Bonet, “Salvador Dalí, Composición, 1946,” Salvador Dalí, Museu Fondació Juan March, Madrid, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.march.es/arte/palma/coleccion/artistas/salvador-Dalí.aspx?l=2.
[76] See Luli Kollsman, Come, Take my Hand (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1949).
[78] Staff writer, “Luli Deste to Make Permanent Home of Huge Old Estate.”
[79] “Luli (Julie) Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen,” Schloss Neubeuern & Familie Miller website.
[80] Letter from Luli Kollsman to the Dalís, July 16, 1946, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archives, Figueres, Spain.
[81] Letter from Luli Kollsman to the Dalís, April 22, 1947, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archives, Figueres, Spain.
