Portrait of Léonce Bénédite

For more than 30 years Léonce Bénédite ran the Luxembourg, the French state's museum for living artists, taking charge in 1892. After Rodin left his work to the nation he also became the first curator of the new Musée Rodin. Beaury-Saurel painted him in 1923, at 64, seated in a carved chair with his arms folded, in a grey suit, white-bearded, the small red rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honour on his lapel. He had received that rank three years earlier. She died the following year, and he in 1925. How the portrait entered the national collections is not recorded. In the lower corner she signed it Julian Beaury Saurel, putting the name of her late husband, Rodolphe Julian, before her own.