Sarah Bernhardt

Please note the material of this lot is patinated plaster and not as previously stated.

The conception of this charming bust of a young American girl by the legendary actress and sculptor Sarah Bernhardt is amusingly recounted in a letter by the sitter's mother, Lillie De Hegermann-Lindencrone, known as Lillie Moulton. When Moulton took her daughter Nina to the theatre to see Sarah Bernhardt in a play, Bernhardt appeared in their box to enquire as to the identity of the child. She then proceeded to ask the mother whether she could model a portrait bust of 'la charmante petite fille'. This led to several sittings in the artist's studio, which Moulton described thus:

'It was enchanting to watch the artist at work. She was dressed like a man:
she wore white trousers and jacket, and a white foulard tied artistically about her
head. She had short and frizzly hair, and she showed us how she did it, gathering the
four corners as if it were a handkerchief, with the ends sticking up on the top of her
head. She smoked cigarettes all the time she was working.'

The portrait bust is said to have received an 'honourable mention' at the Salon, and Bernhardt provided the girl's mother with a version in terracotta. In her autobiography, Bernhardt herself recalls her encounter with Miss Moulton, referring to the girl as a 'ravishing child'.

RELATED LITERATURE
M. E. Mason, Making Love/ Making Work: The Sculpture Practice of Sarah Bernhardt, doctoral thesis, The University of Leeds, May 2007, vol. II, p. 375; L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone, In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875: from Contemporary Letters, published 2019