Harriet Valentine Crocker Alexander (possibly acquired directly from the artist in 1887)
Thence by descent through the family
The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.:
This painting on a large wooden panel is in very good condition. Boldini is a flamboyant artist, and his technique within the hair, sky and blouse is very demonstrative. Being a portrait, there is more attention to detail within the face. Although there may be a few spots of retouching in the side of the nose, there is no damage or restoration to the remainder of the face or elsewhere in the picture.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
Harriet (Hattie) Valentine Crocker was born in Sacramento, California in 1859 to Mary Ann Deming and Charles Crocker. Crocker made his fortune by founding the Central Pacific Railroad; as one of the “Big Four” he, Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins drove the “last spike” at Promontory, Utah in 1869, marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad. After this historic accomplishment, Crocker left California for Europe with his wife, Hattie, and her brother Will, enrolling the children into boarding school in Geneva. On holidays, young Hattie joined her parents on their European adventures, and travel became a lifelong passion (Sylvia Whitehouse Blake, p. 175). Before her around-the-world trip in 1883, Hattie visited Paris at least twice: once in July 1878 to coincide with the
Exposition Universelle, and a return, seven-week stay that September. Hattie’s diaries of the time are filled with reports of visiting the “Expo,” the Louvre, shopping at Le Bon Marché, and visiting friends and acquaintances (from the diary of Harriet Valentine Crocker, 1878-1879, now held by the de Limur family, and cited in Shane Adlee Davis, “Fine Cloths on the Altar”: The Commodification of Late-Nineteenth Century France,”
Art Journal, vol. 48, no. 1, 1989, p. 85) Like many notable Americans of the era, Hattie also posed for her portrait and was painted by such Parisian artists as Michele Gordigiani, who captured her auburn hair and confidant gaze in an 1879 painting. During this time Gordigiani’s fellow Italian expatriate and friend Giovanni Boldini had returned to portraiture after years spent painting small, jewel-like panels of women in interiors (see lot 8) and scenes of life in the eighteenth century as ordered by his dealer Goupil. In the late 1870s and into the early 1880s, Boldini’s social circles expanded making portraiture an increasingly attractive and profitable subject for painting. His portraiture moved between more mannered compositions like
Madame Céline Leclanché (1881, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, fig. 1) and those of the Countess Gabrielle de Rasty or the
Portrait of the Actress Alice Regnault (
circa 1880, Private Collection, Milan, Dini), in which a more expressive brush was used to capture an informally posed model. Boldini’s vision of Hattie follows these examples in its contrast between the traditional profile pose and well-modeled face with the looser swipes of paint of her hand and play of light across her golden bangle. From his early portraits and through the rest of his career, Boldini’s artistic flourishes famously enhanced the specific attributes of his sitter, and in the present work, the swirls and arabesques of the patterned lace are echoed by the loops and curls of Hattie’s tumbling hair. The attention paid to her tresses was not Boldini's alone, but shared by his contemporaries John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, and Paul César Helleu, all of whom painted Hattie’s portrait.
Though seemingly aligned with his portraits of the late 1870s and early 1880s, Boldini dates this portrait to 1887, the same year as Hattie’s marriage in San Francisco to the New York lawyer Charles Beatty Alexander, suggesting that it was perhaps given to mark the happy occasion (the unusual inscription of an arrow through Boldini’s signature perhaps a personal code shared between sitter and artist). Such a grand gift was suitable for such an impressive affair. As The New York Times reported, “for months this event has been eagerly anticipated by Society, among whom the fair bride was recognized as a leader” (“Hattie Crocker Married,” The New York Times, April 27, 1887, n.p.). As captured in her wedding photograph, Hattie was “attired in a long court train of white satin around which extended deep flounces of very costly… lace,” reminiscent of her dress in the present work (“Hattie Crocker Married,” n.p., fig 2). Soon after the ceremony, the couple moved to their stately Manhattan mansion on 4 West 58th street (a wedding gift from her father, since demolished). Boldini’s portrait hung in the ground floor sitting room, just one of the home’s many impressive spaces designed with entertaining in mind; Hattie quickly became known for hosting many charitable events (fig 3). Upon Hattie’s death in Paris in 1935, the portrait passed to her daughter Mary Alexander Whitehouse and then to her son Charles S. Whitehouse (for more on the Whitehouse family please see lot 14). Boldini painted other members of Hattie’s extended family including her niece, Ethel Mary Crocker (later de Limur) in 1906, and, in a 1910 portrait, Ethel’s mother Mrs. William H. Crocker.
