Madame de Loynes

In 1862 the title on this picture did not exist yet. The sitter was Jeanne de Tourbey, 25, born in Reims to a poor family and by then one of the best-known women of Second Empire Paris. Prince Napoléon, a cousin of the emperor, had set her up in a flat on the rue de l'Arcade, and her evenings drew writers such as Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve and Renan. Amaury-Duval painted her in black taffeta against cushions of yellow silk, chin resting on her fingers, with gold earrings in a Greek pattern. The pose is a listener's, and listening was the gift her guests praised. The portrait went to the Salon of 1863. She married the Count de Loynes in 1872, and the picture came to the state in 1914, bequeathed by the critic Jules Lemaître, the companion of her later years.