Mrs Pierre Gautreau portrait will be presented in a public auction in

the USA in a few weeks

The French association Friends of Antonio de La Gandara is doing its best efforts to allow

 this particular work to come back to France either in a Museum or a private collector

Virginie, Amélie Avegno (b.1859 - d.1917), married Pierre Gautreau and has a very active life in Paris. She was supposed to have a liaison with the artist according to Gioia Diliberto in the historical novel: I am Madame X - Scribner, New York 2003.

Oil on canvas 216cm x 116cm with its frame and signed bottom right

The work was presented in a caricature showing the portrait and published in Le Journal amusant Mai 1 st , 1897.

Then in the New-York Times Jan. 3rd , 1898 - Art Principles in Portrait Photography, Baker & Taylor Company Publ.

Then in 1907 - Menschen und Moden Im 19. Jahrhundert 1878-1914.

And in Max von Boehn Die Mode - Brunkmann München in 1963.

The drape of the dress, with the breaks of the silk, offered to La Gandara the occurrence to express its art in the processing of materials. The low neck of the back and the strap are reminiscent of the scandal, a few years before about the portrait by John Singer Sargent of the same model.

In Madame Gautreau, born Virginie Avegno, 1898 – Antonio de La Gandara – Archives from the Frick Collections, New York we read : « (…) Antonio de La Gandara termine le portrait de Madame Gautreau dans une toilette de satin couleur crème et tenant une plume d’autruche avec laquelle elle s’évente. »

In Strapless – John Singer Sargent and the fall of Madame X – Tarcher-Penguin, New York, de Deborah Davis we read : « En 1897, Amélie était prête pour un nouveau portrait. Elle demanda à Antonio de La Gandara (…). Elle portait une toilette d’un blanc crème avec dans sa main droite un grand éventail… Les Gautreau préféraient ce portrait à tous les autres et l’accrochèrent dans leur salon de la rue Jouffroy »

Return to M. Gautreau after the death of the artist, the work remains in the Sitter family until now.

The work was hanged in various exhibitions all over the world: At Durand-Ruel in New-York in 1897 and 1898, in Vienna (Austria) in 1898 under N° 149. At the Secession in Munich in 1900, were La Gandara won the gold medal according to Mrs. Westfeldt Eshleman, her niece. [In Virginie Avegno 1898, Frick Collections, New York]. In 2003 in New York at the Adelson Gallery for the Sargent Exhibition. In 2010 at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, SC (USA). And up to now, in the Albuquerque Museum, NM (USA).