LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  AMERICAN ART  / 

50

Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE (1849-1916) Child Star...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:400,000.00 - 600,000.00 USD
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE (1849-1916) Child Star...
Property from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE
(1849-1916)
Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1889
signed "Wm. M. Chase/ Copyright" (lower right)
oil on canvas
70 x 40 in. (175.9 x 100.3 cm) <p>Estimate: $400,000-600,000 <p> Provenance
Elsie Leslie Lyde Frances Hodgson Burnett Archer Fahnestock Cecilia Linnard Fahnestock Kenneth E. Fahnestock Ira Spanierman, Inc., New York Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1981 <p> Exhibited
New York, Society of American Artists, 1889, no. 31 St. Louis, Exposition, 1890, no. 166 (as Elsie Leslie Lyde) Indianapolis, Indianapolis Art Association, 1890 New York, Old Broadway Theatre, on extended loan from Elsie Leslie New York, Museum of the City of New York, Child Stars of The New York Stage: Little Evas, Lord Fauntleroys and Annies, 1979 Akron, Akron Art Museum, William Merritt Chase: Portraits, 1982 (illustrated) <p> Literature
"The Society of American Artists," Art Amateur, July 1889, p. 27 "Art in Indianapolis," Art Amateur, July 1890, p. 24 Vivian Burnett, The Romantick Lady, New York, 1927, p. 172 (illustrated) Jane Douglas, ed., Trustable and Preshus Friends, New York, 1977, pp. 34-36 Barbara Novak, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Nineteenth-Century American Painting, London, 1986, pp. 276-277, no. 96 (illustrated, p. 277) <p> This painting will be included in the catalogue raisonné of works by William Merritt Chase. <p>In 1885, Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Francis Hobson Burnett (1849-1924) was published in serial form in St. Nicholas Magazine, with illustrations by Reginald B. Birch (1856-1943); the following year, it was published in book form to great popular success. The novel is the story of a poor widow's son, a young working class boy, Cedric Errol, who lives happily among the street peddlers of New York City, and who, after many trials and tribulations, finds his rightful place as Lord Fauntleroy, heir to the English family estate. In 1888, a theatrical production of the novel opened in London, and another production previewed in Boston in September, with the role of Cedric played by seven-year-old Elsie Leslie, her stage name (her surname was Lyde). The play moved to Broadway in December of that year, where it became a favorite of theatregoers. <p>No doubt, Chase was eager to capitalize on the Fauntleroy "craze" and a painting of the young Broadway star would serve as yet another example of his self-promotion savvy. Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy, most likely completed in early 1889 at the height of Chase's career, displays many of the compositional elements used by Chase: the bearskin rug, the Spanish-style chair with elaborately carved rail, the velvet and tasseled cushion, the dramatic background curtain, and, of course, Elsie Leslie in her famous Fauntleroy costume. Chase presented Elsie with the portrait, with the proviso that it first be exhibited in the 1889 exhibition of the Society of American Artists, and in the Chicago Inter-State Industrial Exposition of the same year. In 1890, it was included in the Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Indianapolis Art Association. Mark Twain, a great admirer of Elsie, cast the young actress in the stage version of his novel, "The Prince and the Pauper," and Chase had Elsie Leslie return to the Tenth Street Studio to appear in a literary tableaux of the production that he arranged for his students.
<p>For many years, the painting hung in the lobby of the Broadway Theatre, on loan from the once young and celebrated Miss Lyde, who eventually gave the painting to Mrs. Burnett, author of the play that made her famous. But fame is fleeting, and one of the few durable records of the actress in one of her most famous roles is her grand portrait by the redoubtable Chase. Elsie Leslie Lyde died in 1966, but she lives on as Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy. <p>This essay is based on notes and records in the files of the late Ronald G. Pisano. The Pisano/Chase Catalogue Raisonné Project Foundation has been set up to complete his monumental record of the work of William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). <p>We are grateful to D. Frederick Baker for cataloguing this lot.
Sign In to Bookmark Lot