Titles

Several serious and some fanciful variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Black Lord' (1891, Beatrice Whistler). 1
• 'd'Artagnan' (1892, Whistler). 2
• 'Noir er or; – portrait du comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac' (1894, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). 3
• 'le vrai Dartagnan ... le Chevalier Noir' (1894, Whistler). 4
• 'Arrangement in Black and Gold "Le Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac" ' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). 5
• 'Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac' (1980, YMSM). 6

'Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac' is the preferred title.

Description

A full-length portrait of a man in black holding in his left hand a fur cloak, and in his grey-gloved right hand, a slender walking stick. He has narrow features, brown eyes and dark hair, with a moustache twirled up at the ends. He stands in three-quarter view to right. The background is also black. The canvas is in vertical format.

Sitter

Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) .

The chinchilla-lined cloak that Montesquiou carried over his arm was lent for the sittings by his cousin and muse, Elisabeth, Comtesse Greffulhe (1860-1952). According to W. Graham Robertson, Montesquiou 'was not strong and he told me himself that the weight of the heavy fur coat over his arm tired him very much when he was posing'. Robertson criticized the portrait: 'It gives no idea of Robert's beauty of feature and dignity of bearing', and he added, 'The head is nothing ... And the pose is limp ... giving no hint of Robert's nervous alertness.' 7

Whistler told his wife of Montesquiou's reaction to the portrait:

'Montesquiou was of course simply heroic - "triste et noble" - and childlike in his joy - It really was without precedent in my experience - for expression of such sympathy is unknown to me hitherto and impossible in England ... they gloried in the picture as an apotheosis of themselves, their birth their "race"! - "It is the sense of pride" said the Count, "unstained with vanity"!!! - "C'est noble" said the grande dame with a sort of religious intonation - and there they were really worshipping before a sort of monument of their blue blood! ... I dare scarcely believe that the picture can be as superbe as in the gloaming it looked ... there is no doubt that Madame de Montebello looked at the portrait in its highest sense of achievement ... simply a supreme acceptation of the whole as the highest possible incarnation of all that is beautiful and dignified and magnificent ... And certainly in the flattering light of the evening our Montesquiou poète et grand seigneur did look stupendious [sic]!' 8

Saint-Cère, in an article on Montesquiou published shortly after the portrait was completed for the Salon, recorded the aristocratic Montesquiou as supremely snobbish, and commented on the way in which Whistler's portrait caught the count's unique concept of style:

'M. de Montesquiou est maintenant dans la force de l'âge et l'on n'a qu'à regarder le portrait si évocateur de Whistler pour comprendre qu'il apporte dans la vie tous les préjugés de sa race et tout le désir de ne pas être confondu avec la masse ... Et, cependant, ... il faut bien ressembler aux autres: M. de Montesquiou, tout en portant le costume extérieur de notre temps, ... le col qui ressemble à celui d'un ministre de M. Cassimir-Perier, en est réduit à se distinguer de vous, de nous, par le détail. C'est ce gant gris qui, dans le portrait de Whistler, rappelle les grands seigneurs de la Cour d'Espagne, c'est le jonc posé en avant, provocateur comme une épée de cour prète à se relever pour le duel s'il le fallait; c'est l'oeuil surtout, perçant, aigu et cependant qui ne se pose que légèrement sur les hommes et les choses, comme s'il trouvait inutile de regarder trop longtemps.' 9

The count was also painted in a grey cloak by Whistler, and his account of the sittings was reported by Goncourt (see Impressions de gris perle: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 397]).

A lithographic copy, Count Robert de Montesquiou, No. 2 c084, of Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 398] was made by Whistler.

Two more copies of the portrait, made by his wife, Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896), were listed as by Whistler in earlier catalogues, but identified correctly in the catalogue by Spink et al. 10

Comments

The Frick website comments:

'The painting’s extreme simplicity and somber palette recall the full-length portraits of Velázquez and anticipate certain minimalist tendencies of twentieth-century abstraction, yet its mediumistic character – many contemporaries described it as being like an apparition – relates it to symbolist currents of the 1890s. Whistler's desire to capture the soul of Montesquiou is suggested by his final words to the exhausted model: “Look at me for an instant longer, and you will look forever!” ' 11