Troubetzkoy was an Impressionist sculptor. This was the proposition of the exhibition En Passant: Impressionism in Sculpture, held at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt in 2020. Here Troubetzkoy was presented alongside Edgar Degas, Medardo Rosso, Auguste Rodin and Rembrandt Bugatti as the principal sculptors who manifested the traits of Impressionism in their work. The opinion of the painter Jean-François Raffaëlli quoted by Claris above reflected a strong contemporary association of Troubetzkoy with the fin-de-siècle avant-garde sculptors. Today, Troubetzkoy’s sculpture is again being understood as more than just supremely elegant portrayals of a lost gilded age and his contribution to the development of a new language of sculpture is receiving wide recognition.

Troubetzkoy developed his art outside the academy system and, despite his high social standing, stood apart from the establishment both in his art and life. His militant vegetarianism, for example, was ahead of its time; a belief he shared with George Bernard Shaw who described Troubetzkoy as ‘the most astonishing sculptor of modern times’.

Also known as Dopo il Ballo, this sobriquet for this portrait of Adelaide Aurnheimer derives from the circumstances of the portrait’s creation. It was actually a prize, won by Adelaide in a fund-raising musical costume ball to benefit the Italian artists’ group La Famiglia Artistica in February 1897. Her costume was both fabulous and topical. She dressed as the eponymous tragic heroine from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut, premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin only four years previously. Adolfo Hohenstein (1854-1928), the German Art Nouveau illustrator, designed the costumes. It is evident from one of Hohenstein designs for Manon’s costume in Act 2 that Adelaide Aurnheimer rather embellished the original costume (fig. 1). Troubetzkoy’s portrait was, in fact, one of four portrait prizes that evening, others were offered by the painters Attilio Pusterla (1862-1941), Guido Zuccaro (1876-1944) and Luigi Conconi (1852-1917), a particularly close friend of Troubetzkoy.

Adelaide Aurnheimer (née Rätzsch) moved from Germany to Milan with her husband Karl Friederich Aurnheimer where he became a very successful businessman. The cultivated couple lived between Milan and Lugano becoming patrons of the art, particularly of young Milanese artists. The Aurnheimer’s were prominent supporters of the Famiglia Artistica, which doubtless aided Adelaide in winning the first prize for her fancy-dress.

The fluid modelling of the voluminous drapery, the delicate suggestion of the woman’s beautiful features, the gracefully fleeting composition and the extended double base in the present bronze portrait of Adelaide Aurnheimer can be viewed as a manifesto of the young sculptor’s distinctive approach to the society portrait – the genre that was to define his entire oeuvre. Indeed, Troubetzkoy is said to have displayed a version of the portrait in the window of picture framer in the famous Galleria in Milan to advertise his sculpture (Sladmore, op. cit., p. 66).

It is unusual for Troubetzkoy to give his portraits a thematic title, but this may have stimulated the fame of the model, which was cast in two sizes: the present large format and a reduced size without the lower level of the base (see Sladmore, op. cit., cat. 5 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 1988.302)). Examples of the larger model are known in the Museo d’arte della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (said to be the cast owned by the family), in the Museo del Paesaggio, Verbania (inv. T n.221, where there is also a plaster, inv. T n.220 ), in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (inv. RF 1418, RF 2427, acquired in 1904, dated 1908 and cast by the Milanese foundry Robecchi), in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (inv. 10474), in the Museo Valtellinese di Storia ed Arte di Sondrio, in the Museo Civico di Savigliano and in a private collection, London. A cast in the Cleveland Museum of Art is cited in Sladmore, however, it could not be found in the museum’s online catalogue. The present cast appears unique in that it has a tall lower base which is consistent with the plaster in Verbania and another in the collection of the heirs of Luigi Conconi (Rabai and Troubetzkoy Hahn, op. cit., p. 97).

Troubetzkoy exhibited Dopo il Ballo as the epitome of his new style in shows on two continents, beginning with European shows in Dresden (the cast shown was bought by the museum, but destroyed during the Second World War) and Milan in 1897, followed by St Peterburg and Turin a year later. Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, when Troubetzkoy sought to promote himself in America, the model was exhibited in New York in 1911, Chicago, Saint Louis, and Toledo in 1912, before its final showing back in Europe at Rome in 1913.

The fluidity of Troubetzkoy’s modelling technique suggests a painterly approach to sculptural form which has encouraged many comparisons with contemporary painters. Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) is perhaps the most frequently cited. His stunning portrait of Lady Gertrude Campbell in the National Portrait Gallery, London (inv. NPG 1630, fig. 2) is a perfect example. Painted just three years before Troubetzkoy’s portrait of Adelaide Aurnheimer, it evokes the same wonderful elegance of the period and focuses on the sitter’s sumptuous satin evening dress to draw the viewer into the narrative, as if Lady Campbell had just glided onto a banquette at a grand ball. Further pictorial comparison was highlighted by Yvette Deseyve (Deseyve, op. cit., pp. 234-237) who compared Dopo il Ballo with John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) scintillating portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, painted in 1892 (NG 1656, fig. 3). Each of the sitters in the Boldini, Sargent and Troubetzkoy engage the viewer with a mesmerizing stare that seems any minute about to change into a smile or a whisper. Their poses are relaxed yet maintain a wonderfully composed elegance. Our attention is drawn to the face, shoulders and arms which shine from within their stunning costumes. It is the treatment of the long ball gowns in broad sweeps of undulating forms that cascade from the delicate bodies of the sitters that unites the bronze with these two contemporary paintings and positions Troubetzkoy as the pre-eminent sculptor of the fin-de-siècle high society.

RELATED LITERATURE

E. Claris, De l’Impressionisme en Sculpture, Paris 1902;

Prince Paul Troubetzkoy. The Belle Epoque Captured in Bronze, exh. cat., Sladmore, London, 2008, p. 66, no. 5;

F. Rabai and R. Troubetzkoy Hahn (ed.), Paolo Troubetzkoy. La Collezione del Museo del Paessaggio, Verbania, 2017, pp. 96-97;

A. Eiling and E Mongi-Vollmer (eds.), En Passant. Impressionism in Sculpture, exh. cat. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2020;

Y. Deseye, ‘Paolo Troubetzkoy – “the most astonishing sculptor of modern times”, in En Passant. Impressionism in Sculpture, exh. cat. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2020, A. Eiling and E Mongi-Vollmer (eds.), pp. 222-239