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. - H.B., “Done the Dalí Way,” Art Digest, April 15, 1943.
While Composition: Portrait of Luli Kollsman, appears to be the only American portrait commission Dalí completed in 1946, the artist was in discussion with other potential clients. Of note are letters between Dalí and T.F. MacGrath, the secretary from Cecil and Presbrey, Inc. Advertising in New York. She was corresponding on behalf of Henry Bryan, the President of the Bryan Hosiery Company, for whom Dalí had worked that same year creating advertising graphics for the company which appeared in American Vogue. Instead of another hosiery advert, however, Mr. Bryan wanted Dalí to paint a portrait of Mary “Billie” Marcus, wife of Dallas-based H. Stanley Marcus of the firm Neiman-Marcus. The idea was to present the portrait to Mrs. Marcus as a gift, presumably creating goodwill between Bryan Hosiery and one of their more prominent outlets, Neiman-Marcus.
A letter, dated February 4, 1946 discusses Dalí’s painting Mrs. Marcus from a photograph, and indicates confusion over the price. Apparently they thought Dalí would produce a painted canvas for six hundred dollars, while a sketch was what Dalí had in mind. It is not clear if Dalí had already produced the sketch or not, or if the deal was re-negotiated.[1] The following year there was similar discussion with two residents of the Southern States, who lived in Amarillo, Texas. This was regarding a portrait of Jessie Underwood, the wife of Rip C. Underwood, a landowner with minor interests in Texas oil. Evidently, there had been discussion about a commission for an agreed-upon amount. Based on a letter to Dalí dated July 11, 1947, however, the couple explain that they can no longer afford to have a portrait done for the stated $5,500, as they had fallen on “hard times.” They could, however, pay Dalí $3,000 for the commission, and asked if he would consider that price.[2] Dalí’s response is not recorded, nor is evidence of a contract or a subsequent portrait of Mrs. Underwood.
There is, however, a work by Dalí dated 1947 that was originally owned by the Underwoods. Known simply as Untitled Landscape, it shows a typical Dalínian background in a barren landscape, with the familiar rider on a horse, tiny adult and child, and an angel in the distance. The main object of interest in the canvas is a large, phallic rock, jutting out of the landscape atop of which is perched a figure swathed in blue holding what appears to be a lance. By virtue of a setting similar to a Texas plain, it seems to be a work that would appeal to an “oil man.” The background for this work is so similar to those in Dalí’s portraits of the period, however, and the title so uncharacteristically vague, it is conceivable that it may have begun as the background for a possible Portrait of Mrs. Rip C. Underwood. It would not have been out of character for Dalí to offer the client a less complex piece at the reduced price they were offering. As the work is dated the same year as the correspondence regarding the portrait, there may by a connection. If so, one is tempted to imagine the tiny grey snail at the centre fore of the work as a (not very flattering) comment on the “missing person” of the original commission.
Untitled Landscape, 1947. Oil on canvas, 58.4 x 68.6 cm (22.99” x 27.01”). Originally owned by Rip. C. Underwood. Morohashi Museum of Modern Art, Fukushima (Japan).
Frontispiece of Billy Rose's book Wine, Women and Words, Simon and Schuster, 1948
In 1940 Billy Rose, one of the greatest, and most feared show business impresarios of the mid-century (sometimes described as the "little Napoleon of showmanship“), flirted with the idea of being immortalized by Dalí together with his then-wife, swimmer Eleanor Holm. The latter being described by Time magazine as the most beautiful athlete in the world. Dalí wanted $4,000.00 for two small portraits. In a letter to Julien Levy from September 24, 1940, Rose writes that this price was a little to rich for his blood, and that he would be interested in paying a maximum of $2,000.00 for the two. In view of the fact that he was buying pictures without knowing how they would turn out, he felt that this was a very fair sum.
Levy contacted Dalí and sent Billy his answer the next day (translated literally): “If it is understood that the portraits are not to be of the precise finish which is usual with my portraits, but are simply two easy essays (“ebauches légère“) more or less decorative, I agree to the price of $2,000, as you propose. In that case I would not have need for any actual sittings, but simply some photographs in order to secure a likeness.“ In the event that he was in accord with this, he was to let Levy know as soon as possible, so that Dalí could choose the photographs with him before he left town. Dalí also wished Levy to repeat how pleased he was for the opportunity to visit Rose’s collection, which he had admired recently.
The two small portraits never came to light but in 1944 Rose commissioned Dalí to paint The Seven Lively Arts for the Ziegfeld Theatre. Unfortunately the seven works by Dalí and the above mentioned art collection, that included paintings by Frans Hals, Rubens, and Titian, were destroyed in April 1956, when the home of Billy Rose in Mt. Kisco burnt down. When Rose wrote his autobiography Wine, Women, and Words, published in 1948, it was Dalí who did the illustrations. The work contained numerous drawings, executed in 1947 and 1948, including a frontispiece portrait of Billy and some deft renderings of his wife. One of the Dalí drawings, Eleanor Holm in her Aquacade Swimming Costume, not included in the book, was kept by her for the rest of her life, hanging in her Miami apartment alongside her Olympic medals. Dalí’s illustrations, however, are mere sketches, and judging from the poses, were transcribed directly from photographs.
Eleanor Holm in her Aquacade Swimming Costume, 1947 (Collection Richard H. Mayer, Bamberg, Germany)
Portrait of Mitzi Sigall Briggs, 1948. Oil on unknown support, 21 x 25” (53.3 x 63.5 cm). Private Collection.
1948 was a prolific year for Dalí, who completed five society portraits that year, at least two of which were painted in his studio on the ranch of Col. Howard Mack, while he and Gala stayed in a cottage at the Del Monte Lodge. This was also a good location to secure commissions, as they had the opportunity to rub elbows with all manner of celebrities, expatriates, émigrés, artists and industrialists. The Lodge was famous for its golf course, as well as the picturesque shoreline and its upscale social life. Just south in tony Monterey, many wealthy patrons had homes, among them Muriel Vanderbilt and Bing Crosby. Carmel, on the northern side of Pebble Beach, at one time less fashionable and expensive than Monterey, was very attractive to those in the arts. Writers such as John Steinbeck (who penned Cannery Row about Monterey), and Sinclair Lewis were drawn there, as well as droves of plein air artists as, one writer of the period put it, “White rocks rise like temples out of the Mediterranean-blue of the sea, white swirling foam kissing the bending black cypress whose strange shapes have gone with the wind.”[3] No wonder Dalí was keen to stay there, a place he said reminded him of his beloved Port Lligat.[4]
Dalí painted one of his most flattering portraits in 1948, and once again drew inspiration from the Italian Renaissance. The subject was a young woman named Maria Josefa Sigall (1929-2013), otherwise known as “Mitzi,” a German diminutive for Mary. Mitzi’s father was the much celebrated Polish painter Josef Sigall (1891-1953), a dashing figure who was educated in Vienna and became a gold medallist at the Royal Academy of Arts early in the century. In Europe he painted a number of contemporary monarchs including King George VI and Germany’s Wilhelm II. He moved briefly to South America and in 1922, to the U.S., where he was commissioned to portray Hollywood celebrities, politicians and a number of presidents, among them Hoover, Coolidge and Roosevelt.[5] Mitzi’s mother was Marie Stauffer Sigall, whose own father became a multi-millionaire via his involvement in the creation of the Stauffer Chemical Company. They married in 1928, but Marie divorced her artist husband after he commenced an affair with one of his high profile portrait subjects, the Polish screen siren Pola Negri.
Mitzi was born in 1930, and as a teenager she attended Stanford University where she studied philosophy and education. There she met John “Jack” Carmon Briggs, an ichthyologist who became a well-respected professor in the Department of Marine Biology. The two were married in 1948, when Mitzi was eighteen, and she became Mitzi Stauffer Briggs. Four years later, her mother passed away, and she inherited forty-four million dollars (about $392 million in today’s currency), making her one of the wealthiest women in the Western United States. A surprise to the young couple, this sudden and immense windfall took a toll on her marriage, and she and Briggs divorced, although Mitzi later remarried to Jack’s younger brother. The new multimillionaire had four children and she adopted a fifth son, all of whom Dalí painted in a group portrait in 1964, entitled The Briggs Family Portrait.
Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, Mitzi purchased substantial real estate that included an island in the Bahamas, lavish homes in California and Nevada and the glitzy Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. She struggled to manage her fortune, however, famously losing everything in the early 1970s when she was swindled by corporate mobsters in a gaming scam that centred upon the casino at The Tropicana, of which she eventually lost ownership along with her shirt. Mitzi then managed to make a living as a restaurant hostess, and into her eighties she worked in the gift shop of the Guardian Angel Cathedral in Las Vegas, where she also served as the sacristan and counted the Sunday collection.[iv] Mitzi apparently took the loss of her fortune and property in stride, saying “I don’t feel bitter because . . . I was the one who went in there and did all this. . . . I firmly believe in God’s will, that God allows certain things to happen.” A devout Catholic, she was described by one Las Vegas acquaintance as “a classy lady,” Sadly, by the time she died, in 2013, she was almost penniless.[6]
The portrait commission came about when Mitzi, her mother, and her future husband were dining at Del Monte Lodge in 1946. Marie Stauffer Sigall noticed Dalí and Gala at a nearby table, and approached the painter to ask if he would consider doing a portrait of her daughter. A deal was stuck, and in the summer of 1946, Dalí began painting Mitzi in his studio several miles south of Monterey. Unfinished, the work continued the next summer, and the next, by which time Mitzi was married and expecting a child. Unlike most of his other portraits, where Dalí worked with photographs, Mitzi was painted directly from life in a number of sittings. This may had to do with the young lady’s personal charms, as in his memoir, Mitzi’s husband Jack Briggs reveals that Dalí had “wanted to dispense with clothing in his portrait, but mother Marie objected.”[7] While at first Mitzi attended her sittings with Dalí by herself, Briggs reveals that she had to ask him to accompany her, as the artist was becoming what she described euphemistically as “a bit too friendly.”[8]
Dalí painting Mitzi in his Monterey studio, summer 1947. Courtesy and copyright, Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios
Briggs also points out Dalí’s observation that Mitzi “resembled some of the women who had been portrayed by Botticelli in the fifteenth century.” In keeping with Dalí’s “classic” approach, the portrait does indeed make reference to the Renaissance artist’s work, recalling in particular the lovely La Belle Simonetta of 1475, in which a young gentlewoman shares a similar posture and red robe. Dalí’s most obvious point of reference, however, is the famed Birth of Venus of 1485, including his use of renaissance-style angels, and the conspicuous pink carnation to Mitzi’s right, recalling the airborne spray of similar rose-hued flowers used by the Italian painter. Dalí’s treatment of Mitzi’s hair likewise alludes to Venus’s own windblown locks, although he altered Mitzi’s dark brown hair to a more Botticellian auburn, enhancing the sculptural effect. Just as Venus is born of the sea, the overriding trope of Portrait of Mitzi Sigall Briggs is that of birth, growth, freshness and youth. By swathing his subject in a fantasy garment resembling the unfurling petals of a flower, Dalí portrays his secular Venus as a bud bursting into bloom.
Mitzi posing for her portrait. Courtesy and copyright, Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios.
While these are the overriding tropes of the work, at the time the portrait was painted Dalí explained much of the symbolism in the work to Mitzi. In a 2011 interview for this website, Mitzi relayed that Dali told her, for instance, that the olive leaves which sprout from her petal-like dress represent fertility, while the pink carnation signifies chastity. Dalí further comments upon the girl’s character to the left, where a man stands behind a large rock, out of which comes an arm holding a plumb line. This, the artist explained, indexes Newton and gravity, suggesting that the girl was “well-grounded,” and presumably of “unshakeable” disposition. To her right stand two angels engaged in lively conversation, prophesying that the portrait’s subject was to become the “talk of the angels.” The cloud above, shedding golden light, signals God’s blessing. Finally, the two tiny figures in the background, pointing at an egg-shaped object, represent Dalí and his father watching the birth of the Renaissance.[10]
Sandro Boticcelli, La Belle Simonetta, 1475. Marubeni Collection, Tokyo.
Like many of Dalí’s likenesses, Portrait of Mitzi SigallBriggs was executed in a slightly cartoonish style, most evident in the rather blunt handling of the lines of Mitzi’s dress and hair. Of all Dalí’s society portraits, however, this is surely one of the most flattering and sentimental, suggesting genuine admiration of the young woman’s character and beauty. A year after completion the portrait was shown at the Third Annual Exhibition of Painting at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, which was held from December 1948 to January 1949. It remains in the family collection.
Portrait of Enid Haldorn, 1948. Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 42 ½” (76.8 x 108 cm). Bequest of Stuart Haldorn. Legion of Honour, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.
Another portrait completed in California in 1948 was that of longtime Monterey resident Enid Leonie Haldorn (1892 - 1951). A tall, elegant woman in her middle years, Haldorn was the daughter of Wellington Gregg, vice president of the Crocker National Bank, who had connections to the Del Monte Property Company, the Santa-Cruz-Portland Cement Company, the Moore Shipbuilding Company, and other lucrative enterprises. In 1914 Enid married Stuart Haldorn, the stepson of one of the richest men in Montana, banker and mine owner James A. Murray.[11]
Stuart inherited a substantial portion of his stepfather’s millions, which was to cause him some trouble with a woman who claimed to have married him in 1909, only to be abandoned (after allegedly bearing a child), months later.[12] This scandal and court case came to naught, and the Haldorns, who were married in 1914, lived the good life in Monterey. They spend most of their time yachting, golfing and socializing with equally well-heeled neighbors and visitors to the region. They owned the large estate where the Monterey Plaza now stands, and in 1945 commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build them a home in Carmel, although this never went further than the planning stages.[13]
Enid was musical, and in the early 1940s she composed melodies and wrote songs. She was also apparently a lavish spender, shopping copiously, and was evidently undaunted by the $6,000 fee Dalí charged to paint her portrait.[14] A quite unusual one it was too, according to Frances Cranmer Greenman, who wrote about it in her society column in the July 18, 1948 edition of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune. The entry was called “Fortunes and Plushy Doings Move in on Greenwich Village of Pacific.” In it, she claims that the “Shenanigan Artist” was staying at the Del Monte Lodge, and “Before leaving, he had just finished a portrait of tall chic Mrs. Haldorn.” “The daffy-down-dilly-Dalí trick of it all,” she exclaims, “is that although it is a full length portrait, her figure measures exactly three inches high on the canvas.”[15] As with his recent Composition: Portrait of Luli Kollsman, at this time it seems Dalí was keen on diminutive renditions of his clients.
Gala and Salvador Dalí with the “Witch Tree” landmark at Pescadero Point, Pebble Beach. The Atlanta Journal, September 21, 1941
As Cranmer Greenham suggests, it is a surprisingly small portrayal of Mrs. Haldorn, far from Dalí’s more intimate busts or three-quarter length renditions of his subjects, although similar to his approach in his portraits of Isabelle Baker Woolley and Luli Kollsman. As in other portraits such as Portrait of Elizabeth Gregory, snails feature prominently, as does a rather alarming tree in the middle ground, set on an angle that echoes that of Mrs. Haldorn’s own posture. Considering the close connection the Haldorns had to the Monterey region, it is likely that in place of his usual Port Lligat background, Dalí ventured to depict the windy bay at Pebble Beach. This seems more likely as one of the sights in Pebble Beach, located at Pescadero Point, was a famous tree known as the “Witch Tree,” a blasted cypress with a decidedly sinister appearance. Until it finally fell down in 1964, the Witch Tree was one of the landmarks of the region, and occasionally appeared in films and TV shows, including the 1951 movie Mr. Imperium starring Lana Turner, and the 1956 Julie starring Doris Day.[16]
Raphael, The Alba Madonna, c. 1510. Oil on panel transferred to canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Instead of contemporary dress, the artist has portrayed Mrs. Haldorn wearing an archaic-style draped blue, white and red wrap, with feet adorned in golden sandals. Dalí has continued in his “classic” efforts, and once again references a specific Old Master work. Haldorn’s ensemble and the distinct posture, in addition to the stones upon which she sits and the hilly coastline backdrop, all invite comparison with Raphael’s Alba Madonna, painted circa 1510. While perhaps likening a thin, childless, fifty-six year old woman to a robust Madonna in the bloom of youth may seem like an odd choice from today’s perspective, at the time Dalí’s allusion would have resonated with one of the most important and prominent paintings in the American imaginary. The Alba Madonna was in fact the showpiece of a twenty-five million dollar collection of mostly European masterpieces donated in by American banker, industrialist and art enthusiast Andrew William Mellon. This gift was to establish the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, now one of the country’s most significant arts institutions.[17]
Dalí’s decision to reference the Alba Madonna his portrait of Haldorn was not only an acknowledgment of America’s cultural growth, but also an indicator of the impression the work presumably had upon him while visiting the Nation’s capital. He was a great admirer of Raphael’s, and in his 1942 Secret Life, he writes “If I look toward the past, beings like Raphael appear to me as true gods; I am perhaps the only one today to know why it will henceforth be impossible even remotely to approximate the splendors of Raphaelesque forms.”[18] That said, six years after writing this, Dalí did in fact venture to approximate the splendors of the great Italian artist’s forms himself, creating this unique, mysterious and resonant portrait in the process.
Permission pending.
Portrait of Ludmilla Arnhold, 1948 Oil on unknown medium, dimensions pending. Private Collection, New York.
Note: The authors were sent a photograph of this work by a family member in 2016, who gave us permission to use it at that time for a potential book project, but we have not been able to reconnect with them regarding this website. The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation has been notified of the painting's provenance and owner, and our hope is that, like other Dali paintings, we will be able to click to the link on their website if/when they obtain the permission we were not able to verify in 2023.
In his 1945 Dalí News, Dalí wrote about a “portrait of Mrs. Hans Arnhold holding in her hand one of the crystal boxes of her famous collection” that he intended to show the following year at a proposed portrait exhibition. This work was indeed painted, but was not completed until 1948. The subject was fellow exile Ludmilla Beatrix Maria Arnhold (née Heller, 1894-1976), a Berliner whose father was a grain wholesaler, and whose family was connected with a private bank.[19] Ludmilla, who had at one time been described as the most beautiful woman in Berlin, married Hans Arnhold, one of six children of the Jewish banker Georg Arnhold (1859-1926) who together with his brother Max established the bank Gebrüder Arnhold (Arnhold Brothers) in Dresden. After studying in the United States, Hans became head of the Berlin branch of the Gebrüder Arnhold, which was one of the leading private banks in Germany until it was “Aryanized” and taken over by Dresdner Bank in 1935.[20]
The couple and their two daughters lived in a lakeside villa at the Wannsee in Berlin, which in the 1920s became a salon for many Berlin socialites, artists, musicians and intellectuals. The German New Objectivity painter Otto Dix, likely among this circle, painted a portrait of Hans’s brother Kurt Arnhold, in 1927. Because of their faith, in 1938 the Arnholds had to sell their Berlin property for a token price to the German Ministry of Finance, and in 1939 their bank in Germany was liquidated by the Nazis. The family briefly relocated to their Paris apartment on Avenue Maurice Barres. Not long after, their impressive library and art collection was confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, and much of it was lost during the war.[21] Today the Berlin Villa, which was later recovered by the Arnholds, is the seat of the American Academy in Berlin, a research and cultural institution considered the world’s most important center for American intellectual life outside the United States.[22]
By 1940 the family was living in exile in New York, where Hans took over the bank branch of Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, making it the institution’s new headquarters. They lived at the Ritz Tower Hotel, and it was likely in New York where Dalí first met the Arnholds. According to Arnhold’s daughter, (name withheld), the Dalís and the Arnholds in fact became good friends, and the artist was so taken with Ludmilla that he requested Hans’s permission to paint her portrait. As no documentation has come to light regarding the work, it is not known what the financial arrangements were, if any.[23] What is evident is that Dalí painted an attractive portrait, a clear index that he thought highly of his subject.
Portrait of Ludmilla Arnhold is unusual for Dalí, in that he paints the sitter at such close proximity, filling the canvas with the upper half of her body, which almost bursts beyond the confines of the frame. In the background he has painted what would become his increasingly standard cloud formation, of a bright, blue sky to the left, and a dark stormy assemblage to the right, out of which beam rays of sunshine. Instead of the usual Cadaqués-inspired backdrop, Ludmilla has been placed in what looks like a rural Spanish or Italian setting, with a low mountain range to the left, and a river flowing under a bridge to a rustic rural village to the right. A tiny white angel strolls across the vast expanse of yellow earth behind Ludmilla, who sits near a blasted tree with exposed roots. This could well be another reference to the Witch Tree at Pebble Beach, or, similar to Portrait of Elizabeth Gregory painted the same year, it may signify the subject’s status as a refugee, as the Arnholds had been “uprooted” from their Berlin home.” [24] This is perhaps reinforced by the figure in a rough pink garment painted at the bottom of the tree, who appears to be draped despondently over the tree’s roots like a scar.
Ludmilla was around the age of fifty-four when Dalí painted her, although she appears here as youthful and robust. Her pale skin is flawless and glowing, and her right arm and hand, although rather awkwardly rendered and slightly disproportionate, are graceful and smooth. The same can be said for her lovely face and bountiful bronze-coloured hair, which is piled high on her head. Dalí has typically included period grooming details, including Ludmilla’s carefully applied lipstick and manicured nails polished with burgundy varnish. He also pays close attention to the subject’s jewels, in this case a large pearl ring and heavy silver bracelet set with jade or emerald cabochons.
Peter Paul Rubens, Hygeia, Goddess of Health, circa 1615. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Reichhold.
For Portrait of Ludmilla Arnhold, Dalí has continued in his classic vein, swathing Mrs. Arnhold’s body in red fabric, which is lined with sky blue. Beneath she wears a neutral-toned shift, and about her knees, an earth-toned fabric blends in with what is presumably the ground. For inspiration, Dalí has looked to Baroque and Mannerist artists such as Rubens and Bronzino, and has perhaps made reference to portraits by both. In particular, Ludmilla’s crimson wrap, fleshy, robust appearance, piled hair and stormy sky backdrop bring to mind Rubens’s beautiful Hygeia, Goddess of Health, painted circa 1615. This work, it should be noted, had recently been donated to the Detroit Institute of Arts by another prominent Jewish couple from Berlin, who also were living America. This was Mr. and Mrs. Henry Reichhold, the latter of whom had made a fortune by founding a chemical company earlier in the century. The work, which was donated by Mrs. Reichhold in 1944, may have been familiar to the Arnholds, and perhaps had something to do with Dalí’s allusion to it in Ludmilla’s portrait.
Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady, 1550 The Sabauda Gallery, Turin.
In terms of presentation, it seems Dalí also took a cue from Agnolo Bronzino, an artist famous for his exquisitely detailed and sensitively-rendered portraits of wealthy patrons. In order to highlight Ludmilla’s beautiful arms, hand and jewellery, as well as the “box from her famous collection,” he surely drew inspiration from Bronzino’s portraits such as Portrait of a Lady of 1550, in which fine ladies clutch books or bibelots to display their elegance, wealth and learning. The box Ludmilla holds, which Dalí described in the Dalí News as being of crystal, appears in fact to be a golden snuff or bibelot box. It was perhaps one of the few items from the Arnhold’s celebrated collection of art and antiquities that eluded confiscation by the Nazis, and therefore parallels the Arnhold’s own escape from the horrors of war. The portrait continues to be displayed in its original, ornate antique frame, and remains in the family. It has never been published or exhibited publicly. [25]
Portrait of Elizabeth Gregory, 1948. Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 74.5 cm (35.43” x 29.33”). Promised gift of Andre, Alexis, and Peter Gregory, the children of George and Elizabeth, to American Friends of the Israel Museum, in honour of their parents.
In his 1945 Dalí News, the artist writes of a work in progress, one “Portrait of Mrs. George Gregory in a red dress and Russian jewels designed by Dalí.”[26] This “mystical interpretation,” as it was captioned by one newspaper of the time, was comprised of yet another commission from a wealthy European exile: Elizabeth Gregory (1898 – c.1973), described as a “member of the international social set,” and her husband George, “a financier who escaped Russia after the revolution.”[27]
The composition in Portrait of Elizabeth Gregory is decidedly awkward, with the Surrealist-inspired blocking at the front of the plane rising up toward the subject, a primly groomed Elizabeth (Lydia to her friends) propped stiffly before it. Elegant and rather bemused, Lydia is extremely décolleté, with a gold satin wrap draped precariously low about her shoulders, and the aforementioned red dress barely visible below. As the artist described, she wears her (presumably) Russian jewels, including three strands of pearls and large pearl earrings and has been placed in a desert setting populated by a few oddly shaped mountains, rows of trees, and unidentified edifices. In the distance an angel in a red robe greets a man in a red cap. Towards the right centre of the canvas, the heavy-lidded subject gazes straight at the viewer, and propped before her rests a medallion embossed with her regal profile.
In his 2007 book The Society Portrait: Paintings, Prestige and the Pursuit of Elegance, Romanian art historian Gabriel Badea-Päun decodes some of the iconography of the work using knowledge presumably passed on by the Gregory family. She writes that the snails before and beside the sitter were intended to reference her husband and children, and Dalí apparently painted Lydia next to a city pavement upon which rests an uprooted tree. This was to signify her status as a refugee, having travelled from Russia to Europe, and finally America.”[28] Information about this migration and the Gregory family’s history has come to light in a 2013 documentary about one of the subject’s sons, actor Andre Gregory, famous for films such as the 1981 My Dinner with André. Her son also reveals his views on his parents’ character, very little of which is flattering.
Entitled Before and After Dinner, among other things in the film, Andre reminisces about family life in the 1940s when he, his parents, and his two brothers Alexis and Peter, lived in New York. He maintains that his parents were secretive, unaffectionate, and frequently absent, referring to them, in fact, as “Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.” The documentary cites George and Lydia as “Jews who forgot to tell their kids they were Jews,” and it turns out that their real family name was Josefowitz.[29] In her home country, Lydia’s father had been a prominent lawyer, who had been imprisoned by the Soviets.[30] As a young woman, Lydia moved in artistic circles, and had been the lover of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Andre describes her as an “iceberg” with a thick Russian accent, and narrates an incident that took place at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, where the Gregorys had left their children while they travelled for a period of time. [31] Upon their return, Andre’s mother apparently spotted a nurse taking a baby for a stroll on the grounds. “What a beautiful baby!” she exclaimed. To which the nurse responded, “But Madam — he’s yours!”[32]
George Gregory — a man he describes as “non-human” – Andre believes was manic-depressive, and incapable of feeling empathy.[33] He explains how he was not surprised to learn, from a mention in a book by historian Harold James, that his father and uncle (then Gregori and Zelik Josefowitz) may have been hired by Hitler and the Reichsminister of Economics, Hjalmar Schacht, in a scheme to devalue the franc in 1933, in order to commit financial espionage against the French.[34] Andre recounts that before they left Russia, his father had been a confidant of Trotsky’s, but that he escaped before Stalin came to power. The next stop was Berlin, where he worked for IG Farben, the German chemical company that would later produce Zyklon B, used to gas Jews and others in extermination camps.
The Gregorys, as they became, then moved to Paris before the beginning of the war, and Andre recalls Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, visiting their house. Mysteriously always one step ahead of conflict, the family then moved to England just before Hitler invaded Poland. Finally, in 1939, they relocated to the United States, where George Gregory was interrogated for hoarding gold.[35] Despite this shady past, however, in 1957 George Gregory was awarded the Legion d’honneur for his post-war supervision of the construction of 10,000 prefabricated homes in France.[36]
Living out the war years in the U.S., the Gregorys lived in opulence, mingled with Hollywood stars, poets, intellectuals and artists, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. In the summers they rented a luxurious mansion in Beverley Hills that was so extravagant, Andre claims, the driveway was made of clear plastic, which was lit from below. Having fallen in — reputedly by paying a social “fixer” — with the rich and famous of the Hollywood set, he recalls that among visitors to the mansion were the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Basil Rathbone, and Charles Boyer.[37] He notes, in particular, a doubles match in the private tennis court, which pitted Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich against Thomas Mann and Errol Flynn — the latter of whom, it was rumoured, had been romantically involved with Lydia.[38]
Stationed primarily in New York, the Gregorys continued to move in well-to-do and high fashion circles, primarily consisting of artistic European émigrés. As such, it was inevitable they would cross paths with Gala and Salvador, particularly as they could speak Russian with Gala, and held a mutual acquaintance with the Russian expat socialite Tatiana du Plessix, a hat designer for Saks Fifth Avenue, and her husband Alexander Liberman. The latter worked for Condé Nast, the publisher of several important mid-century magazines, including Vogue, House and Garden, and the New Yorker, becoming the conglomerate’s Editorial Director in 1962.[39] Their daughter, writer Francine du Plessix Gray meticulously documents this extravagant, elegant, artistic and often cut-throat social circle in her fascinating 2005 book Them: A Memoir of Parents. A dinner party at their home, for instance, might include such diverse guests as the Dalís, the Gregorys, John Gunther, Marlene Dietrich and Christian Dior.[40] This circle also included Iva Sergei Voidato Patcévitch, another high level executive at Condé Nast. Iva and Lydia also had an affair in the 1940s, and Dalí also painted his wife Nada, in 1948.
Portrait of Nada Patcévitch (Nadiesda Gellibrand Patcévitch), 1948. Oil on canvas, 132 x 81.5 cm (51.97” x 32.28”). Private collection.
Portrait of Nada Patcévitch, it turns out, was one of Dalí’s most regal, if not particularly flattering works. The subject’s full name was Nadiesda (Nada) Patcévitch (née Margaret Adah Noel Nadiesda Gellibrand). Nada was born in 1893, most likely in Chelsea, England. She was the daughter of timber merchant William Clark Gellibrand, who was born in Onega, Russia, and his Canadian wife Isabel Marie Drever. Nada had two sisters, the most notable of whom was Paula, a beauty sought after by famous artists like Jasper Johns, and a muse to Cecil Beaton in the 1920s.[41] Nada was also a beauty in her youth, and subsequently admired for her elegant style and extravagant jewelry. She circulated in the world of fashion, working as an editor at London Vogue, and later, in America, dabbled in design, producing objets such as seashell mirror frames, which sold in New York City in the 1940s.[42]
Nada married three times. Her first husband was British army captain Basil Hastings Barber, who died of scarlet fever in 1925,[43] and her second, Ferdinand Robert Ruffer, one-time Assistant Secretary, Mission Anglaise de l’Armament, Paris.[44] Her last husband was Iva Sergei Voidato Patcévitch, president and chairman for many years of Condé Nast. In the 1940s, the Dalís were very close with the Patcévitches, and Dalí dedicated books and drawings to the couple.[45]
Iva and Nada Patcévitch in the 1940s.
Despite three marriages, Nada never had children of her own, although she became something of a style mentor and mother to Francine du Plessix Gray, when this American writer was still a teenager. Nevertheless, Francine had little that was flattering to say about Nada in her memoir. Comparing her mother and Nada, she claims they were both “tall, generous, cultivated, imperious women who terrified their husbands into satisfying their every whim.”[46] Painting a picture of a childless, fragile, yet regal woman, she wrote that in the 1940s, “The delicate, skittish Nada was a virginal Diana whose great violet eyes surmounted a sharply aquiline nose and a thin, distinctly unsensuous mouth,” the latter having “carefully painted lips curling savagely over her white teeth.” At five feet nine inches, and wearing a size ten, she goes on to describe the “borderline emaciation that characterized Nada’s frigid style.” Du Plessix Gray delights in recounting that a maid charged with tending to Nada during visits confided that she could not bear looking at her mistress’s breasts, which she compared to “little dead frogs.”[47]
Du Plessix Gray recalls that “scraps” of Nada’s past “came tumbling out of her chatter: her presentation at Court, when she had been dreadfully ashamed to have dropped her handkerchief before the queen; Bucharest in the twenties, Baden-Baden on the thirties, when she had been courted by the earl of so-and-so, the duke of this-and-that.” Further, “Nada was one of those British dilettante expatriates to whom lightly learned wanderings – be it in Afghanistan, Tibet, or North Africa – were an essential part of their identities.”[48] She goes on to describe how Iva would buy his wife jewels to atone for his reputedly endless infidelities, including, of course, his affair with Lydia Gregory. “Bauble after repentant bauble came Nada’s way, the most memorable of them being a three-inch high ‘dog collar’ of tourmalines and small diamonds, which covered the entire height of her slender neck down to the edge of her frail shoulders and remained her stylistic trademark.”[49] The couple finally separated when Iva fell in love with none other than Marlene Dietrich, resulting in their divorce in Reno in October, 1948. Nada continued to work with Vogue, interviewing Ghandi in New Delhi just days before he was executed, and becoming deathly ill on assignment in the Sahara desert in the early 1950s.[50] She lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico in the early 1960s, and is believed to have died circa 1970.
Nada Patcévitch sporting the baroque pearl ring she wears in Dalí’s portrait, and her trademark “dog collar” of tourmalines and diamonds. Photo by Erwin Blumenfeld, published in U.S. Vogue, January 15, 1945.
It seems many of the attributes alleged by Du Plessix Gray are captured in Dalí’s stern portrait, painted the same year the Patcévitches parted ways. Dalí himself reported as Leonard Lyons' guest columnist on February 28, 1948 that he has started the portrait of Nada, who came to his studio in Monterey in a white and gold museum gown, covered with amethysts of all sizes and shades. When he looked away from her he discovered to his stupefaction that his whole studio was gold and amethyst. A blond dandelion was on her hair and the sea-urchins on his bookcase merged with her amethysts. A good omen for the portrait. Dalí chose an unusual format for this piece, with Nada standing full-length. This may have been the sitter’s preference, affording her the opportunity to showcase her impressive physique, as well as her exquisite gold satin brocade evening gown. Dalí has posed her against his habitual Port Lligat-inspired horizon, and has added a stormy cloud to the right, and a tiny figure in the background gazing into the sepia mist. Nada’s expression is wan, her violet eyes doleful and her rouged lips set resignedly over the unsensuous mouth aptly described by her protégé. The artist also carefully detailed Nada’s famous jewelry, laid heavily around her neck, wrist and finger like gold, sapphire and diamond trophies. One solitary pearl appears to have dropped off and rolled into the barren landscape like a fossilized tear. These ornaments were no doubt given to the wearer by her husband who, considering the portrait is dated the same year as their divorce, is tempting to imagine is the tiny, distant figure with his back turned to Nada.
The Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, circa 1592, The National Portrait Gallery, London.
Once again, Dalí draws upon a lexicon of plant and flower symbolism to express his own estimation of the viewer. Although he has made the subject look a good decade younger than her fifty-five years, this view is clearly neither high nor charitable. Attributes he has chosen for this “virginal Diana” include a scrawny tree with a broken trunk, a solitary weed to the left and, most notably, placed in clear reference to the standing, puff-sleeved subject behind it, a dried dandelion. This sorry vegetation, gathered on the desolate and infertile landscape, loudly suggests Dalí’s view of this once-lovely lady as having “gone to seed.” Perhaps more subtly, the artist also appears to make reference to another portrait of a regal, childless, aging English redhead swathed in jewels – that of Queen Elizabeth I. The stately posture, the sumptuous dress, the wavy strawberry locks, but most notably the cloud formations suggesting good and bad weather behind the upright subject all bring to mind the famous Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, circa 1592, which captures the likeness of the monarch known as the Virgin Queen.
La Turbie: Sir James Dunn, 1949. Oil on canvas, 132.7 x 90.5 cm (52.36” x 35.43”). The Beaverbrook Art Gallery/The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation. Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
At this point in his portrait career, Dalí was evidently interested in the grandiose, and one of his last portraits of the decade also references – ironically or not – another great ruler. The portrait was La Turbie: Sir James Dunn of 1949, a rendering of Canadian financier and industrialist Sir James Hamet Dunn (1874 - 1956). An important figure in Canadian economic history, Dunn’s accumulation of wealth and influence is a classic early twentieth-century North American rags-to-riches story. Born to a Protestant family in New Brunswick, Dunn’s once-prosperous father died when he was an infant, leaving his mother to scrape by. As a young man he found work as a ship deckhand, then in manufacturing, and eventually, with a number of odd jobs, paid his way through law school. He then worked as a lawyer, living in Montreal and practicing at a prominent firm.[51]
Intelligent and ambitious, Dunn gravitated toward the stock exchange, where he set up his own brokerage company and became a player in the world of banking and finance throughout Canada and then the United Kingdom. Dunn made a number of investments in Canada, most notably his purchase and revitalization of Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, a company that operated mines, and produced steel primarily for the bridge-, railway-, and ship-building industries. Highly influential in business and finance in 1921, Dunn was awarded the title of baronet for his corporate support of the war effort. Not everyone was so impressed with Dunn, however, and in reference to his character and business ethic, Canadian historian Michael Bliss describes Dunn as “an irascible old pirate straight out of some surrealistic mock epic of primitive capitalism.”[52]
While financially astute and hard-working, Lord Dunn also thoroughly enjoyed life. He married three times, possessed a private aircraft, maintained an impressive wine cellar, and frequently visited New York, where he took in the entertainment and stayed at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel.[53] One of Dunn’s colleagues was fellow-Canadian press baron, businessman, and minister in the British government, Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, a highly influential figure of the day. According to historian Duncan McDowell, in his novel Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh based the rich, ambitious, but unrefined Canadian businessman Rex Mottram on an amalgam of these two “uncouth Canadians.”[54] Great friends, Beaverbrook not only wrote a biography of Dunn after his demise in 1956, but went on to marry his widow seven years later.[55] This was Dunn’s former secretary, Marcia Anastasia Christoforides, known as “Christofor.” She and Dunn became good friends with the Dalís, and the artist went on to paint her portrait in 1954. La Turbie: Sir James Dunn depicts a stony-faced Dunn swathed in a gold satin wrap intended to evoke a toga.[56] He is seated with legs crossed upon a classical-style stone plinth that resembles the base of a throne. Along the outside are a figure standing contrapposto, and a nude rider on horseback. In the background is Dalí’s typical landscape, although with an outcropping near the water, in front of which is a ruin that resembles the Parthenon. Below the subject is Dalí’s signature set of cloud formations: a fluffy white one to the left, and dark and stormy one to the right. The entire composition is stiff, awkward, and decidedly over the top.
Horatio Greenough, Enthroned Washington, 1840. National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.
For his “classic” reference, Dalí looked again at works that were available and known in North America, and Washington, D.C. in particular, where he would have had the opportunity to view them first hand at the Smithsonian Institute or the National Gallery. Comparison suggests that for La Turbie, the artist drew upon a work that combines classical imagery with American history: that of Horatio Greenough’s 1840 statue Enthroned Washington, commissioned by the US Congress for display in the Capitol rotunda. Greenough in turn based the piece on ancient descriptions of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Considering the hyperbolic nature of Dalí’s portrait, it is not surprising that Greenough’s work was widely ridiculed at the time as grandiose, incongruous and vulgar.[57]
Instead of comparing Dunn to Washington however, Dalí apparently believed his client resembled Augustus Caesar. In his biography of Dunn, Lord Beaverbrook gives an extraordinary account of how the artist secured a commission from the industrialist, by "ambushing" him at the Pavilion Restaurant in New York. Perhaps Dalí was aware that Dunn was fond of commissioning paintings of himself; up to that point he had already been rendered by many of America’s best portraitists: Harrington Mann, Augustus John, Walter Sickert, Alphonse Jongers, Gerald Brockhurst, Douglas Chandor, Elmer Greene and Henry Carr among them. In any case, along with the aroma of fine cuisine at the Pavilion, Dalí evidently sniffed opportunity wafting from Dunn’s direction. He expertly insinuated himself at the financier’s table, insisting that he resembled – nay, must be descended from – none other than Augustus Caesar himself. So convincing was Dalí’s program, that by the end of the meal, a commission – apparently to the tune of $12,000 — twice his going rate — had been secured.[58] By early the next morning, the first sitting commenced at Dunn’s suite at the Waldorf.
Replica of the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Tropaeum Alpium Museum, La Turbie, France.
Records in the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation archive show that Dunn had wanted the work to reference James’ ownership of Algoma Steel, and that his wife Christofor had photographs sent to Dalí to that effect. A letter dated May 14, 1949, from a secretary at Algoma Ore Properties in Sault Ste. Marie to Lord Dunn at the Waldorf-Astoria reads, “As requested by Lady Dunn I am enclosing photographs showing the rocks along the shore of Lake Superior at Theano Point. This is the scene of the actual discovery of pitchblende (Uranium Oxide).”[59] Presumably forwarded to Dalí to use as a setting for the work, the artist nevertheless painted his usual landscape, based loosely on either Port Lligat or perhaps Pebble Beach, with some Greek architecture thrown in. Indeed, after a number of sessions in New York, the sittings were completed in Dalí’s Pebble Beach studio, where Dunn and his wife had flown in.
Typically, Dalí did not allow the sitter to view the canvas until it was finished, and the final result was often a shock for patrons, who were not always immune to Dalí’s subtle or occasionally outright parodies, not to mention his occasionally questionable technical rendering. Beaverbrook describes the Dunn’s reaction to the work when it was finally shown. Upon the unveiling of the finished canvas, he writes that James and Christofor were stunned. They gazed at the scene in silence. At last the quiet was shattered. James gave a great loud long almost howling laugh, clapping his hands over and over, by no means a demonstration of applause. Dalí with dampened spirits asked for judgment. James replied: “Give me time.”
After that, apparently no more was said. Cristofor, however, forbade exhibition of the work, and discreetly hung the piece in her bedroom, safely out of the public eye.[60]
The partial title of the portrait of Sir Dunn, La Turbie, was a later addition to the work. Beaverbrook writes how the Dunns visited the Roman La Turbie in the South of France, above Monte Carlo. Here in six B.C. Caesar Augustus erected a great monument to commemorate his conquest of all the Alpine tribes from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and upon which he placed a two-hundred foot bronze statue of himself. Only part of the massive base remains today, but in the nearby Tropaeum Alpium museum is a replica of the Roman marble Augustus of Prima Porta, which the original statue is thought to have resembled. According to Beaverbrook, Dunn had his wife take his picture standing next to the likeness of the great emperor, which proved, he claimed, Dalí’s insistence that there was a remarkable resemblance between Dunn and Caesar.[61] Resemblance or no, the portrait itself reveals much about how Dalí viewed Dunn’s own self-image, and just how far the artist could push caricatures of his subjects before he met with resistance. Nevertheless, as Bliss writes of the work, “Has there ever been a more absurd — perhaps more revealing — portrait of the entrepreneur than Salvador Dalí’s 1949 representation of Dunn as a Roman emperor enthroned overlooking Lake Superior?”[62]
Portrait of John Perona, 1949. Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 25” (86.2 x 63.6 cm.)
In 1949 Dalí produced what some might consider another, equally absurd and revealing portrait of a male entrepreneur, this time the owner of New York’s most prominent nightclub, the El Morocco. With his savvy understanding of the hospitality industry, Giovanni “John” Antonio Enrione Perona (1897-1961) mixed a potent cocktail of alcohol, fine food and music with celebrities, socialites and style makers in an exclusive and distinctive setting that became central to the New York high life from the 1930s to the 1960s. This made him a millionaire, allowing him to amass an impressive collection of jewelry, antiques, properties, automobiles, and works of art, including more than a few portraits.
Like many of Dalí’s wealthy American subjects, Perona was an immigrant who came from humble beginnings. One of seven children born to a farming family in a small village near Ivrea in Turin province, Italy, at the age of fifteen he immigrated to the U.S. to join his brother, who had set up in New Jersey as a dairy farmer. He later moved to New York City, where his first job in the restaurant business was as a busboy. In 1922 he married Eleonora Pauline Enriello Allono, also the daughter of Italian immigrants, and they had one son, Edwin, in 1922. The following year, during Prohibition, John and his brother opened a speakeasy called Perona’s Cabaret, on West 46th Street. This was followed by a string of similar establishments, with themes ranging from Turkish to Parisian (replete with cancan dancers), until in 1931, when he hit upon what turned out to be the winning Moroccan theme. Vernon McFarlane, the fashionable interior designer who furbished a number of leading society nightspots in the 1930s was enlisted to turn El Morocco into an exotic paradise.[63] This included Arabesque touches throughout: pointed archways, exotic screens and faux cacti, all painted white, as well as artificial palm trees with see-through plastic fronts and a dark blue ceiling with twinkling “stars.” Most notably, it included the blue and white zebra striped upholstery on the club’s banquettes that were to be become El Morocco’s trademark “backdrop.”
The El Morocco, referred to as the “Elmo” or “Elmer” by regulars, was located in Manhattan at 154 East 54th Street. Once Prohibition was repealed, it grew to become the café society go-to supper club, where patrons could eat fine French food, sip the latest cocktails, and dance the night away with fellow glitterati. One newspaper described it as the place “Where smart New Yorkers welcome the elite of the world.”[64] The El Morocco was nothing if exclusive, and Perona is credited with having initiated the “velvet rope” approach, where doormen would hand-pick only the richest, most celebrated, or best looking guests. Indeed, being admitted entrance was so difficult, and so desirable, that the in-house photographer for the club Jerome Zerbe stated that “Grown men would break down with frustration at failing to catch the eye of Carino, the maître d’.”[65] Those who were deemed worthy of entrance were then seated according to a strict class structure: the banquettes were for the celebrities, where they could best be seen; the seats near the dancefloor were reserved for the best looking women; and the B-listers found themselves in “Siberia,” the section in the back.[66]
Dalí gets friendly with fellow patrons at the El Morocco in the 1950s. The “El Morocco Family Album”
Perona understood that a good social mix was essential to keep things interesting. This included European aristocrats, Bohemian artists, nouveau riches, and American old money with names like Astor, Rockefeller and Whitney. It also meant a hearty dollop of gold-diggers, playboys and gigolos. Most glittering of all were the stars of stage, screen, and style, which at any night might include Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Ginger Rogers, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Vreeland.[67]
In a pre-selfie world, people went to the El Morocco primarily to be seen and photographed at this exclusive hot-spot. As such, Perona made sure Zerbe and other professional photographers snapped images the night through, catching the beau monde in flattering poses while they raised glasses or cut the rug with other celebrities or millionaires. These images would then be fed religiously to the press and international wires, always hungry for society and celebrity news. Zerbe maintains that “They were there to show off in front of each other and they didn’t mind showing off before the whole world as well. Mind? They wore the small fame I gave them as a badge.”[68] Of course, especially when his subjects were photographed sitting against the unmistakable backdrop of the Elmo’s zebra-striped décor, this all provided brilliant advertising for the El Morocco.
While being seen at the Elmo was the main event, another game was “Looky-Looky,” which meant, as one patron recalls, “eyeballing Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Joan Blondell and Paulette Goddard, along with Vanderbilts, Hearsts, Roosevelts and an assortment of international royalty.”[69] While this unofficial stage-show was going on, two different dance orchestras provided the soundtrack to the evening, in rotation. One played the nightclub hits of the day while the other specialized in rhumba, tango, mambo and other Latin favourites. The club also boasted an exclusive, more tastefully decorated private chamber, where classical music was played. Lunch, dinner, and late after-theatre meals were served, and the menu featured French cuisine with the likes of Quail in cocotte aux raisin, Grouse Écossaise roti à l’Anglaise, and Frogs’ Legs Tatare. Of course, cocktails were shaken and stirred throughout the day and night, until the club closed at four a.m.[70]
Perona became profoundly wealthy thanks to the El Morocco, the proceeds from which allowed him to live a lifestyle worthy of any of his privileged patrons. Observing this first hand in his 1956 book, No Cover Charge: A Backwards Look at the Night Clubs, author Robert Sylvester writes that “he daily keeps what he rather wishfully refers to as his ‘banking hours.’ This means that he is awake . . . He may spend the late afternoon and dinner hour sitting for a portrait by Salvador Dalí. He may go for a spin in some new foreign car which he will eventually buy after spending more afternoon hours unloading whichever other foreign car he owns . . ."[71] Perona also purchased land in Sussex County where he maintained a Tudor-style mansion fitted with a tennis court, custom swimming pool, large guest house, and an eight-car garage -- presumably to house some of those foreign cars. On this property he even dammed a stream to create a body of water he dubbed “Perona Lake.” The club owner also maintained a vacation home in Palm Beach, another in Weehawken, New Jersey, and an apartment in the New York City.[72]
El Morocco membership card.
Dalí and Perona knew each other well, which is hardly surprising considering they both courted the same type of client for their respective purposes. Of the multitude of photographs taken by Zerbe and other photographers, Dalí appears frequently at the club, rubbing elbows with socialites and stars of all stripes, often with Gala at his side. In 1950, Dalí’s collection of Surrealist jewels, then being sold at Alemany and Ertman on Fifth Avenue, were even showcased in the El Morocco lobby.[73] Perona was an eclectic art collector, and owned at least two of Dalí’s paintings. Among these were Resurrection of the Flesh (circa 1940) and My Wife, Nude, Contemplating her own Flesh becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture (1945).[74] The artist also dedicated a number of prints and books to the nightclub owner, often signed to “mon ami” including a copy of his Secret Life which is inscribed "Para Juan Perona, Très amicablement, Souvenir des Boconoles, Delmonte, Salvador Dalí, 1949." Considering the portrait was painted in the same year as the inscription, this mention of Del Monte Lodge suggests Dalí may have painted the work in his Monterey studio.[75]
Comparison between a period photograph of John Perona and a detail of the mirrored portrait.
While Dalí and Perona appear to have been good friends, the portrait of the nightclub owner is not among Dalí’s finest. While using similar props as La Turbie, the effect is less grandiose and was limned with less care and finesse. Like the Dunn portrait, Dalí has swathed the nightclub owner in the same yellow satin wrap to lend a classicising element, albeit one that is undermined by Perona’s decidedly contemporary suit and tie peeking from beneath. That this is a “classic” work is also reinforced by the sarcophagus-like slab Perona leans upon, which is meant to appear carved with three nude and remarkably muscular putti, who are attempting to catch birds or butterflies with a net. Above Perona floats a nicely rendered, if rather pointy body of white clouds against a clear blue sky. The background is Dalí’s typical formula of a long landscape view, with a low mountain visible through the mist. As usual, a few figures populate the sandy expanse to lend to a sense of perspective, and in the middle ground, a crudely-painted nude woman stands next to a zebra, an obvious reference to the El Morocco’s logo and signature animal stripe décor.
Perona is depicted in Dalí’s stiff and somewhat stilted way which strongly suggests the figure was taken from a photograph, maybe even the one shown above. This is corroborated by the fact the subject’s ring is faithfully rendered askew upon his little finger. Notably, Dalí’s portrait has an intimate quality, and the sitter is depicted with a particularly benign expression on his face, giving him the appearance of a kindly uncle rather than the worldly ringmaster of New York’s toniest supper club. This is reinforced by Perona’s posture, as he sits in a relaxed pose meant, presumably, to suggest his arms loosely folded before him. Unfortunately, Dalí seems to have lost interest in painting his second arm and hand, which has mysteriously fused with the slab before him.
Portrait detail.
This brings to mind Dalí’s Portrait of Colonel Jack Warner, painted two years later, in which the movie mogul’s legs likewise fuse awkwardly with his sarcophagus/desk. Also similar to the Warner portrait, a carnation – Dalí’s traditional symbol of marriage and fidelity – hovers ready to fall at the edge of its stone perch. Like Warner, Perona was both a married man and a known womanizer, a fact Dalí seems to suggest by perching love’s blossom on the brink. Zerbe recalls that “At four in the morning, we’d leave the club – and John would have arranged to have as many as four cabs lined up at the curb, their motors running, and in every cab there’d be a pretty girl. John would look them over and then choose one to take home with him or more often, two.”[76] Dalí seems to have carried the theme of Perona’s love of women further with the nude standing by the zebra, the only one to appear on any of his society portraits. It also may explain the burly putti in the frieze on the sarcophagus catching birds with a net, alluding perhaps to the thrill of the sexual chase in Perona’s personal life, and of course, a chief pass-time of many patrons of the El Morocco.
Letter from Salvador Dalí to Princess Obolensky, 1949
At the end of the 1940s Dalí seems to have begun work on a portrait of a Mr. Bemberg, who deceased before the work could be finished. After his client's death it seems Dalí felt awkward contacting the heirs directly, and decided to write to a mutual friend, Princess Helene Obolensky, who had been a personal assistant to Coco Chanel and now was fashion editor of the magazine Town and Country. In a letter, written on Del Monte Lodge stationary in 1949, the artist offers his condolences and reports about the commission. He had already completed the background of the portrait and asks Helene to get in touch with the Bemberg family to find out in a diplomatic way if they want him to complete the painting. [77] Obviously he had not yet been paid for the work.
There is only one Mr. Bemberg connected both to Salvador Dalí and Princess Obolensky who seems to be the likely subject for the portrait commission: Federico Otto Bemberg, born in Buenos Aires in 1885, who died on March 31, 1949 in New York after a long illness. Mr. Bemberg's interests included banking, real estate, cattle raising, cotton mills, and breweries. He was one of five children who were heirs to the estate of the late Otto Bemberg, whose fortune was valued as high as $250,000,000. [78]
In the tycoon's art collection was at least one other painting by Dalí, Rock and Infuriated Horse Sleeping Under the Sea, that appeared on the cover of Town and Country in February 1948, reproduced exactly to scale. The painter exhibited the small canvas at the Bignou Gallery in New York in winter 1947/1948, and it might have been on that occasion that he met the wealthy Argentine. What happened to the unfinished portrait canvas is not documented but in 1952 the Bemberg's vast fortune was wiped out in one swoop, when family assets were seized by the Juan Peron government. According to his descendants the above mentioned letter is the only proof of a commission to Dalí for a portrait of Mr. Bemberg. [79]
ENDNOTES
[1] Correspondence between T.F. MacGrath on behalf of Henry Bryan and Dalí, dated 1-5-46 January 5, 1946 and February 4, 1946, respectively. The Gala-Salvador Dalí Archives, Figueres, Spain.
[2] Letter to Dalí from Mr. and Mrs. Rip C. Underwood, Amarillo, Texas, dated July 11, 1947. Portrait of Mrs. Rip C. Underwood, The Gala-Salvador Dalí Archives, Figueres, Spain.
[3] Frances Cranmer Greenman, “Fortunes and Plushy Doings Move in on Greenwich Village of Pacific,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, July 18, 1948, n.p.
[4] “The sky and the mountain skyline near Carmel remind Dalí of his beloved Lligat.” A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor R. Morse, The Dalí Adventure 1943-1973 , figure 50)
[5] Thanks to Paul Dorsey of the Dalí News blog for generously sharing his research on this portrait, as well as to Mitzi Sigall Briggs and her daughter Linda Leonard for telephone interviews conducted on June 24, 2011, and Jan. 20, 2011, respectively; “Joseph Sigall,” Jewish Galicia and Bukovina (JGB): Promoting the Study and Commemoration of the Cultural Heritage website, accessed May 11, 2014, http://jgaliciabukovina.net/149558/personality/josef-sigall.
[6] John L. Smith, “Former Tropicana Owner Still has Faith After Mob, Corporate Muggings,” Las Vegas Review Journal, February 22, 2009, accessed May 11, 2015, http://www.lvrj.com/news/40056192.html; John L. Smith, “The Ballad of Mitzi Stauffer Briggs, Heiress Who Lost It All in Vegas,” The Daily Beast, September 30, 2013, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/30/the-ballad-of-mitzi-stauffer-briggs-heiress-who-lost-it-all-in-vegas.html.
[7] Smith, “The Ballad of Mitzi Stauffer Briggs.”
[8] Smith, “The Ballad of Mitzi Stauffer Briggs.”
[9] John C. Briggs, A Professorial Life: An Autobiographical Account (Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2009), accessed May 11, 2015, googlebooks.ca, n.p.; Mildred Brown Robbins, “From Where I Sit: Mufti for First-Nighters, and A Three-Year Project for Dalí,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 3, 1947, n.p.; Staff writer, “Debs’ Portrait Painted by Salvador Dalí,” San Francisco Call Bulletin, August 7, 2015, n.p. [10] Mitzi Sigall Briggs, telephone interview with Julia Pine, June 24, 2011.
[11] Bailey Millard, History of the San Francisco Bay Region, Volume II (Chicago, San Francisco and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1924), 296, accessed April 15, 2015, https://archive.org/stream/historyofsanfran02mill/historyofsanfran02mill_djvu.txt.
[12] Staff writer, “Woman Claims Divorce from 1909 Marriage Has Never Been Obtained,” The Tuscaloosa News, November 18, 1929, n.p.
[13] Bailey Millard, History of the San Francisco Bay Region, American Historical Society, 1924 Volume II, 296, accessed May 19, 2015, googlebooks.ca, n.p.; Tom Owens, Melanie Bellon Chatfield, Insiders’ Guide to the Monterey Peninsula (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Insiders’ Guides, 2004), 131; “Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa” Canneryrow.com, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.canneryrow.com/leasing/monterey_plaza.html; Bill Farley, The Irish Fox: Jim Murray’s Journey from the Depths of the Great Famine to Immense Wealth During America’s Gilded Age, book proposal, Legacy Writers, n.d.; Staff writer, The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Utah, November 17, 1929, 29.
[14] Cranmer Greenman, “Fortunes and Plushy Doings,” n.p.; Farley: The Irish Fox, n.p.; “America Today” by Enid Gregg, Musical compositions, Part 3, Catalog of Copyright Entries, Library of Congress, Copyright Office., 1941, p. 1647.
[15] Cranmer Greenman, “Fortunes and Plushy Doings,” n.p.
[16] “Julie,” “Mr. Imperium,” Films Shot in Monterey County, Monterey County Film Commission website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.filmmonterey.org/films_j.htm.
[17] “About the Gallery,” and “The Alba Madonna,” National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., website, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/about.html.
[20] Dieter Ziegler, Die Dresdner Bank und die deutschen Juden, Volume 2, (Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2006), page 148fn.; Ingo Köhler, Die “Arisierung” der Privatbanken im Dritten Reich: Verdrängung, Ausschaltung und die Frage der Wiedergutmachung (Verlag: C.H.Beck, 2005), 213, fn 55.
[21] Arnhold records, Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg:Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume, accessed Feb. 2, 2016, http://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/card_search.php?Query=Arnhold.
[22] “Hans Arnhold Center,” The American Academy in Berlin website, accessed February 1, 2016, http://www.americanacademy.de/home/about-us/hans-arnhold-center.
[23] Telephone interview by Julia Pine with (name withheld), the Arnhold’s granddaughter, January 28, 2016.
[24] Gabriel Badea-Päun, The Society Portrait: Paintings, Prestige and the Pursuit of Elegance, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 205.
[25] Telephone interview by Julia Pine with (name withheld), January 28, 2016. It should be noted that (name withheld) later became acquainted with Dalí independently of her grandparents. This was through her good friend Carlos Alemany, the jeweler who produced so many of the artist’s extraordinary creations in gold, pearls and precious stones. While she vividly recalls Dalí holding court at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel, as well as Captain Moore’s ocelot, the subject of Ludmilla’s portrait never came up in conversation with the artist.
[26] Dalí, Dalí News, 1945, 4.
[27] Caption for uncited period clipping, attributed to International News Photos, stamped May 25, 1952.
[28] Gabriel Badea-Päun, The Society Portrait, 205.
[29] Michelle Aldredge, “Being André Gregory: Before and After Dinner,” Gwarlingo website, August 8, 2012, accessed May 19, 2015, http://www.gwarlingo.com/2012/being-andre-gregory-before-and-after-dinner/; Cindy Kleine, Director, Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner, 2013.
[30] Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman (New York: Knopf, 2009), 336.
[31] Kleine, Before and After Dinner, 2013,
[32] Aldredge, “Being Andre Gregory.
[33] Kleine, Before and After Dinner, 2013; Ezra Glintner, “Documentary Sheds Light on Andre Gregory, Star of ‘My Dinner With Andre,’” in Forward: The Jewish Daily, April 09, 2013, accessed April 15, 2015, http://forward.com/articles/174172/documentary-sheds-light-on-andre-gregory-star-of-m/?p=all#ixzz3FC7o3K2U.
[34] Kleine, Before and After Dinner, 2013; Bill Stamets, ‘Andre Gregory’ doc serves as a film epilogue, Chicago Sun-Times, June 27, 2013, accessed May 21, 2015, http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/movies/20944056-421/andre-gregory-doc-serves-as-a-film-epilogue.html#.VC-GB7mBGcw.
[35] Ezra Glintner, “Documentary Sheds Light.”
[36] George S. Gregory, obituary, The New York Times, March 7, 1983, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/07/obituaries/george-s-gregory.html.
[37] Todd London, “Andre Gregory Sees the Light,” Theatre Communications Group website, 2013, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/Mar05/gregory.cfm.
[38] Aldredge, “Being Andre Gregory.”
[39] Kleine, Before and After Dinner; Lerman, The Grand Surprise, 327.
[40] Peter B. Fling, “Tatiana du Plessix Liberman Dies; Leading Designer of Hats Was 84,” obituary, New York Times, April 29, 1991, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/29/obituaries/tatiana-du-plessix-liberman-dies-leading-designer-of-hats-was-84.html.
[41] “Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury (1898-1986),” Collections, National Portrait Gallery (UK) website, accessed May 19, 2015, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp64738/paula-gellibrand-marquise-de-casa-maury?search=sas&sText=Gellibrand.
[42] “An Aesthete’s Lament,” comment on “Those Fashion People: Iva S.V. Patcévitch,” The Peak of Chic blog, accessed July 4, 2012, http://thepeakofchic.blogspot.ca/2010/06/those-fashion-people-iva-sv-patcevitch.html. [43] “Basil Hastings Barber,” Ian's Genealogy Pages: Genealogy of the Cowans and the Macaulays website, accessed May 19, 2015, http://tng.cliftonbeach.net/getperson.php?personID=P1190587120&tree=CowanMacaulay.
[44] “Ferdinand Robert Ruffer,” John Gellibrand’s Gellibrand Family Tree website, accessed May 20, 2015, http://www.gellibrand.com/fam00457.html.
[45] See, for example, Dessin pour le ballet Bacchanale, 1939, pen and ink and wash on paper, dedicated “Pour Iva et Nada Patcévitch avec mille choses afecteuse pour le Noel de 1944, lot 311, Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, London, 23 June 2010, auction catalogue, accessed May 20, 2014, http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2010/impressionist-modern-art-day-sale-l10007/lot.311.html.
[46] Francine Du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 351.
[47] Du Plessix Gray, Them, 352.
[48] Du Plessix Gray, Them, 352.
[49] Du Plessix Gray, Them, 354.
[50] Virginia Spencer Carr, Paul Bowles: A Life (St. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 219.
[51] Duncan McDowall, “Sir James Hamet Dunn,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historic Canada website, accessed May 21, 2014; “Sir James Hamet Dunn,” The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, accessed May 21, 2014, http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095735110.
[52] Michael Bliss, “Facing Judgement Before the Bar of History,” Report on Business Magazine (July, August, 1985), 88.
[53] Bliss, “Facing Judgement,” 88.
[54] Michael Bliss, book review of Duncan McDowell, Steel at the Sault – Francis H. Clergue, Sir James Dunn, and the Algoma Steel Corporation 1901 – 1956, in Report on Business Magazine, July/August, 1985, 88.
[55] See Lord Beaverbrook, Courage: The Story of Sir James Dunn (Fredericton: Brunswick Press, 1961).
[56] This, or a similar gold satin cloth appears in a number of Dalí’s portraits, including Portrait of Bettina Bergery, 1934, Portrait of Elizabeth Gregory, 1946, and Portrait of Mrs. Phillips with Lamb and Angel, 1945-1953. Presumably the artist liked the way the light reflected off the fabric, the draping, and the rich colour.
[57] Horatio Greenough, “Enthroned Washington,” Histories of the National Mall, accessed May 21, 2015, http://mallhistory.org/items/show/17.
[58] Manuel del Arco, Dalí al desnudo (Barcelona edita José Janés, 1952), 83.
[59] Letter from Algoma Ore Properties Limited, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario to Lord Dunn, dated May 14, 1949. As this correspondence appears in the Gala-Salvador Dalí archives, it is presumed this was forwarded to Dalí for use in the portrait.
[60] Beaverbrook, Courage, 244.
[61] Beaverbrook, Courage, 245-6.
[62] Michael Bliss, book review of Duncan McDowell, Steel at the Sault – Francis H. Clergue, Sir James Dunn, and the Algoma Steel Corporation 1901 – 1956, in Report on Business Magazine, July/August, 1985, p. 88.
[63] Catalogue entry, Landmark Sale of the Collection of John Perona, Owner of the Legendary New York Supper Club, El Morocco, Doyle New York, September 16, 2014, accessed November 11, 2016, https://doyle.com/auctions/14em01-el-morocco-john-perona-collection/doyle-new-yorks-september-16-2014-auction-el; Staff writer, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 27, 1935, p. 14.
[64] Doyle catalogue.
[65] Brendan Gill and Jerome Zerbe, Happy Times (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), p. 19.
[66] Doyle catalogue.
[67] Doyle catalogue.
[68] Gill and Zerbe, p. 19.
[69] Carol Bruce, former El Morocco patron, as quoted in Laura Shaine Cunningham, “Ghosts of El Morocco,” New York Times, Sept. 5, 2004, accessed November 29, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/nyregion/thecity/ghosts-of-el-morocco.html?_r=0).
[70] Doyle catalogue; undated menu from the El Morocco, as cited in Doyle catalogue, lot entry # 699.
[71] Robert Sylvester, No Cover Charge: A Backward Look at the Night Clubs (New York: Dial Press, 1956), p. 95.
[72] Doyle catalogue.
[73] Caption for image number 517203468, “Couple Admiring Jewelry by Salvador Dali,” dated 1950, from the Bettman archive at Getty Images, accessed November 29, 2016, http://www.gettyimages.ca/. [74] James Thrall Soby, Salvador Dali (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1946), pp. 77 – 79.
[75] Doyle catalogue, Rare Books, Autographs & Maps auction, lot number 397, accessed November 29, 2016, https://doyle.com/auctions/14bp04-rare-books-autographs-maps/catalogue/397-dali-salvador-secret-life-of-salvador-dali.
[76] Gill and Zerbe, p. 20
[77] Handwritten letter in French from Salvador Dalí to Helene Obolensky, offered for sale by RR Auction, April 19 - May 8, 2019, Lot 420.
[78] The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky, April 1, 1949, p. 29.
[79] E-mail from François de Ganay to the author, March 30, 2017.