Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac was painted from 1891 to 1892. 1

1891: The sitter, Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) , commissioned his portrait in a lengthy convoluted letter in February 1891.

'Depuis quand veux-je rouvrir la communication, pourtant pas tout à fait fermée, puisqu'elle a laissé filtrer à mon adresse, et mon endroit de si spécieux croquis dédicacés ...

Non ce qui m'amènerait plutôt vers vous c'est faire un pas vers votre palette. C'est voir et savoir et avoir et savourer de quoi il retourne à cet endroit sensible où pendent, avec les curiosités des nations présentes, et l'ébaudissement des époques futures, le corollaire graphique, le témoignage figuratif indispensable & unique, et le commentaire consacrant de ce que j'ai l'intention de laisser de gloire! - avec aussi un petit intérêt pour vous je pense.

Des amis bien intentionnés et assez pythiques, ont eu le sens clairvoyant et intime d'attirer encore récemment sur ce point prestigieux mon attention, qui y était déjà théoriquement fixée, mais à quand la pratique, la mise en oeuvre, et en chef d'œuvre, en toile, et en cadre? en bouteille aussi et enfin, puisque quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire. ...

Certes ni vous, ni moi ne doutons de poser ni de peindre; mais enfin nous n'en sommes pas moins dans cette seule sécurité néfastement sommeillante, en train de nous endormir, vous, sur vos lauriers, moi sur mon rôti!

Ainsi et plus éloquemment et élogieusement raisonnèrent raisonnablement les voix amies qui me délogèrent de mon expectance et mon espérance fatalistes - et me firent compter quelques écus! A présent je thésaurise ... vous m'arrêterez!

Je propose - disposez!' 2

A rough translation of this extraordinarily flowery and obscure letter reads as follows:

'For a long time I have wanted to re-open communications, not however quite closed, since there have filtered through to my address, and my corner, some especial, signed, delicate - and very precious - sketches. ...

No, what would bring me to you is more to take a step towards your palette. It is to see and to know and to have and savour from what it returns to this sensitive place where hangs, with those curiosities of present nations, and the rejoicing of future epochs, the graphic corollary, the indispensable and unique figurative evidence, and the consecrating commentary on what glory I mean to leave after me! - with a little interest for you also I think.

Some well-intentioned and fairly Pythian friends, have had the clairvoyant and intimate sense to attract my attention again more recently on this point, which was already theoretically fixed thereon, but when to practice, implement, the masterpiece, on canvas, and in frame? and finally bottled, because when the wine is poured, it must be drunk. ...

Certainly neither you, nor I have doubts about either posing or painting; but we are nonetheless no less in this only dormant security, in the process of going to sleep, you, on your laurels, me, on my roast!

Therefore and more eloquently and favourably reasoned reasonably the friendly voices that dislodged me from my expectancy and fatalistic hope - and made me count a few pennies! At present I hoard … you will stop me!

I propose - you dispose!'

On 16 March Montesquiou's great friend Elisabeth, Comtesse Greffulhe (1860-1952) advised Whistler on the pose suitable for the proposed portrait!

'Il faut que cette vision unique soit - unique -

Soyez long à choisir la pose.

Devant un être aussi multiple n'a-t-on pas à lutter contre mille tentations -

Il est, entre toutes, une expression qu'il faut saisir et qui est celle où sa personnalité se révèle et où son expressivité est conforme à son être intérieur.

Il faut se garder d'être trop vite séduit par l'extrême élégance de sa race -

Je tremblerais de voir un "Robert de Montesquiou" "chic jeune homme de la fin du XIX siècle" (qu'il sait être aussi) -

Vous voudrez le regard: et vous aurez raison! -

Je voudrais le profil et j'aurais raison! - Le "très beau profil" sculpté par Michel-Ange avec l'intensité de l'oeil qui voit et qui pense, - contrairement à ceux qui regardent sans voir, et qui, surtout, n'ont jamais pensé.' 3

Translation: 'This unique vision must be - unique -

Take a long time to choose the pose.

In front of so many-faceted a being does one not have to struggle against a thousand temptations -

There is, within everything, an expression one has to seize that is the one where one's personality is revealed and where one's expressiveness conforms to one's interior being.

You should guard against being too quickly seduced by the extreme elegance of his race -

I would tremble to see a "Robert de Montesquiou" "smart young man of the end of the 19th century" (which he also knows how to be) -

You will want the face and you will be right!

I would want the profile and I would be right! - The "very beautiful profile" sculpted by Michelangelo with the intensity of the eye which sees and thinks, - contrary to those who look without seeing, and who, above all, have never thought.'

Whistler told Montesquiou to come over to London:

'tout est préparé, comme vous voyez, pour notre chef d'oeuvre! - et cette fois-ci c'est sérieux - même je n'ose guère en parler! - ainsi soyez bien pret a séjourner dans ce pays à climat tranquille! jusqu'à la fin de notre grande entreprise!' 4 (Translation: 'all is prepared, as you see, for our masterpiece! - and this time - this is serious, I hardly even dare to talk about it! - so be ready to sojourn in this country with its peaceful climate! until the end of our grand enterprise!')

In early May, the 'Black Lord' was in progress in London, but sittings were interrupted when Whistler caught 'flu. 5 In June Montesquiou begged Whistler not to show anyone 'd'aucun de nos prestigieux complots (et prodigieux!) de toiles' ('any of our prestigious (and prodigious!) plots of canvasses'). 6

According to Montesquiou (quoted by Goncourt) on 7 July 1891:

'Whistler est en train de faire deux portraits de lui: l'un en habit noir avec une fourrure sous le bras, l'autre en grand manteau gris, au col relevé, avec, au cou, un rien d'une cravate d'une nuance, d'une nuance ... qu'il ne dit pas, mais dont son oeil exprime la couleur idéale.' 7

Translation: 'Whistler is in the process of painting two portraits of him: one dressed in black with a fur under the arm, the other in a big grey coat, collar upturned, with, at the neck, a nothing of a cravat of a shade, a shade ... that he does not describe, but his eye expresses the colour perfectly.'

The two portraits were Impressions de gris perle: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 397], and Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 398].

In October, more sittings were planned, as Whistler wrote to Montesquiou, 'Je viens de retourner le tableau qui nous implore de le finir! - Mais les quelques jours nécessaire doivent être tout à fait sans ennuis - sans préocupations.' ('I have just returned the picture which implores us to finish it! But the few days necessary must be entirely without problems - without worries.') 8 According to Montesquiou, he was posing in London on 21 November 1891. 9

On 24 November Whistler told Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), in confidence, that he was at work on the portrait:

'Vous savez que Montesquiou est içi - et je travaille tous les jours jusqu'à la nuit au portrait - de sorte que je manque chaque soir mon courier - Vous savez ceci est absoluement entre nous - et vous ne direz rien à personne a propos de ce nouveau tableau n'est ce pas!' 10

On 27 November 1891 Saint-Charles wrote that the portrait was not finished. 11 In December Whistler showed it to Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926). 12 Montesquiou left London, also in December, but Whistler refused to let him pay before the portrait was completed. 13

1892: Montesquiou arranged that Whistler should borrow part of the studio owned by the artist Antonio de la Gandara (1862-1917) at 22 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, while his tenant, the artist Joseph-Félix Bouchor (1853-1937), was absent, from mid-January to early February 1892. 14 Whistler wrote to his wife, Beatrice, on 24 January 1892 that on his first afternoon in Paris, on Wednesday, he had a sitting from Montesquiou and on the Thursday he did some 'tinkering on the hand' without success, but further sittings would be delayed for a week since Bouchor was spending some time in his studio, but, when they recommenced, Whistler thought 'I ought really to manage it in three or four days if I don't get demoralized!' 15 Soon afterwards he wrote that his trip to Paris had dragged on too long, 'all because of this great black work that still is there - an eternal terror and reproach until it is done!' but, he added, the studio was splendid and 'After Friday I am to have clear work without further interruption.' 16 He wrote that Antonio de la Gandara (1862-1917) had stood in for Montesquiou one morning:

'Gandara is an excellent fellow ... I got him this morning to come and stand for me before the arrival of the Count!! - He brought his dress clothes and I put in the whole of the background and the tone of the figure - then he bolted and at about one o'clock Montesquiou appeared, and I put him in his place and went right on without his dreaming that other mortal had desecrated the atmosphere of the "respectueux" so necessary to his existence! - ... However after all as he explained to me this evening ... de La Gandara is "of race" - born in short - so that after all everything was saved! -

The picture tonight looked superb! But then you know the next day is what I dread always.' 17

At some time Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) also stood in for the Count, wearing Montesquiou's coat. 18

Montesquiou brought Marie Louise Hortense Madeleine de Montebello (1853-1930) to see the supposedly completed portrait, as Whistler reported to his wife:

'I was not displeased that he should do so, for the whole picture had not yet sunk in - and the back ground and figure all went beautifully together - Chinkie I wish you could have seen the two in front of the work! - They were splendid! - these two amazing ones - all "respectueux", and absolutely without a doubt! - a sort of unveiling in Olympus - or last tableau in a very superior pantomime!

Montesquiou was of course simply heroic - "triste et noble" - and childlike in his joy ... And certainly in the flattering light of the evening our Montesquiou poète et grand seigneur did look stupendious [sic]!' 19

Whistler may have worked on the portrait in the summer. 20 Montesquiou, presumably thinking the portrait finished, in gratitude sent the Whistlers an Empire bed (now in the Victoria & Albert Museum). Whistler thanked him effusively for 'le splendide cadeau du beau lit Empire' but proposed further sittings, 'bien comme vous le dites, "soixante scéances" c'est beaucoup, mais ce n'est pas assez! ainsi mon cher ami, à notre prochaine rentrée!' 21

According to Duret, Montesquiou had posed in Whistler's studio in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. 22

Montesquiou said that: 'Les toutes dernières séances ne sont pas loin de se comporter de même pour obtenir ce que le Maître appelle "l'air aisé de la chose" ', and that he posed over one hundred times before it was finished. 23

1894: It was shown at Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Champ de Mars, Paris, 1894 (cat. no. 1186) as 'Noir er or; – portrait du comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac'.

The Pennells claimed that either Impressions de gris perle: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 397] or Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac [YMSM 398] was among portraits seen by Alan S. Cole in Whistler's studio on 24 September 1890 but this is impossible. 24 They add that it was Whistler's fourth portrait of a man in evening dress (these being Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland [YMSM 097], Arrangement en couleur chair et noir: Portrait de Théodore Duret [YMSM 252], and Arrangement in Black: Portrait of Señor Pablo de Sarasate [YMSM 315]).