Scala Regia Inspirational Archives: February 2009

28 February, 2009

At London:

Magnificence of the Tsars

10 December 2008 - 29 March 2009

This exhibition illustrates Russia’s relationship with her past and with Europe through two centuries of men’s court dress.

It is curated and mounted by the Moscow Kremlin Museums. Together with the Armoury Chamber, they form Russia’s oldest national treasury, founded in 1806. Their collections include the dress and regalia worn by the emperors and the Russian court from the 1720s to 1917. This exhibition focuses on men’s dress, particularly the coronation dress of the emperor and other participants in ceremonies at court.

Until the reign of Peter the Great (Peter I, ruled 1682–1725) Russia was isolated from Europe. Peter then introduced many western institutions and practices. His dress reforms replaced traditional Russian clothing with European fashions, or ‘Saxon and French’ fashion as it was called in Russia.

On Rita:

"...Rita was welcomed in Paris, where she spent parts of each year. She would arrive at the Ritz with a hairdresser, masseuse, chauffeur, secretary, maid,... and 40 Vuitton trunks... In Paris, she joined ranks with musicians, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers, names like Rodin, Duse, Yvette Guillbert etc... Impressed by Rita's innate creative spirit, Isabella Stewart Gardner, the great collector and creator of the Gardner museum in Boston, once asked their mutual friend, John Singer Sargent, why Rita had never expressed herself artistically, "Why should she?" Sargent answered, "She herself is art." .

She had a special penchant for the Renaissance, was an expert on Oriental art, and as innovator of fashion wore the first backless evening dress at the opera. Shoes were also one of her passions, and she possessed literally hundreds of pairs made of Elizabethan lace, rare skins, and quattrocento velvet, all buckled, often with jewels, made by the genius Pietro Yantourny, who worked only for women he admired. He did not charge them for every pair -each of a different style- but asked for an initial fee of a thousand pounds. After this, he could afford to have the tress made from wood normally used for making violins. When hard-pressed for money, Mrs Lydig preferred to fill her house with rare white flowers rather than to eat".

Socializing

Giovanni Boldini

Giovanni Boldini, born in 1842, was an Italian genre and portrait painter. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.

Rita de Acosta Lydig

Princess Marthe Bibesco

Count Robert de Montesquieu

Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and went to Florence in 1862 to study painting, meeting there the realist painters known as the Macchiaioli. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known. He attained great success in London as a portraitist.

Marchesa Luisa Casati

Countess of Zichy

Lady Colin Campbell

From 1872 Boldini lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He also became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Impressionist influence but which most closely resembles the work of his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu.

Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough and sonJohn Singer Sargent

He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment. He died in Paris in 1931.