Who is Jeanne Samary?

Pushkin Museum

The Collaboration between State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Yokohama Museum

The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia came to Japan in July 2013, holding their exhibition at Yokohama Museum. I got to know of this exhibition through a TV commercial. The TV commercial publicized the exhibition by asking the TV viewers, "Who Jeanne Samary is" by showing her portrait and invited viewers to come visit the exhibition.

Yokohama Museum Flyer

The exhibition presented a grand total of 66 outstanding French paintings ranging from the 17th century works by Nicolas Poussin, Money, Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh, to the 20th-century French artists such as Picasso and Matiese. I did wonder why a Russian museum would possessed so many French work arts at first. Russia and France, just did not make any sense to me. The exhibition only showed 66 paintings. The State Pushkin museum itself, posses more than five hundred thousand art works, dating back from ancient times and up to the mid-20th century of Dutch, Flemish, Italian, and especially French paintings.Wow!!! Five hundred thousand art works. Just impressive!!!

Catherine the Greatand Golden Age

Catherine the Great(Russia)
 

The key person to why the museum holds so many European paintings was Catherine the Great, a German princess from one of the tinry German states, who turned out to be a powerful and enlightened ruler of the vast Russian empire from 1762 to 1796. She was particularly fond of French culture. Her wish is to transform the city into a major intellectual and cultural center was one of the motivation that drove her to acquire entire collections of French art. French artists and writers were regularly invited to the St.Petersburg court. Before time can tell, the actions of one powerful woman with one modern dream enabled Russia to possess the greatest collections of French painting anywhere in the world outside of France.

Jeanne Samary,  a French dreamstress in one of the paitings by Renoir

Jeanne Samary in the dress in Renoir's Portrait of the actress Jeanne Samary, 1878

Among one of the 66 paintings, I will cover "Jeanne Samary". I did not know much about her before researching about her. Her painting done by Renoir. The title of the painting is Potrait of Jeanne Samary (La Reverie). It is a  wonderful, dreamy and sweet potrait of Samary. Yokohama museum used the 'La Reverie' for the TV commercial.

Coming from a strong musical and theatrical background, Samary strived to become successful in the acting world. Her father was a cellists and her relatives were actresses too. With her family background, that explains why she became an ambitious woman. However, lady luck was not on her side. Even though she won first prize for her comedic acting at 18 for her debut as a servant actress in the Tartuffe performance, her acting career did not expand from there. She was cast yet again as a servant character. The reviews potrayed Samary as "stout, pink and merry" in her maid's costume.   Not wanting to be characterized by that forever, she seeked other ways to advance her career by working as a model for Renoir. Since she was a public figure, she thought maybe her modelling work would do her some good by gain some prestigious acting roles.



Portrait of Jeanne Samary (also known as Reverie) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1878

Coincidentally, Renoir, a young yet unowned impressionist painter came into the picture. He often came to see Samary. He was probably mesmerized by Samary's physical appearance and her pale skin complexion. One thing lead to another, before we know it, Renoir was painting Samary's potrait. After several paintings, Samary complained that her potrait lacks of impression of freshness and pure radiant colours. Taking this critical comment to heart, Renoir painted Samary again, this time with great dedication, expressing emotion and excitement.

According to many analysis, in this portrait, Renoir painted with so much passion that dramatic contrasts and freedom can be felt from it. In the modern times, we could just sit and be mesmerized by the pretty pink background and and Samary's lighthearted smile with her bluish  dress colour. However, in the oldern times, where impressionist painting was still not yet acknowledged by the public, the portrait angered the public, critics and artists. It is hard to image someone dared to paint a portrait using pink and green paint as main colours for picture. Although the portrait sparked public outrage, Samary loved it and kept it in her apartment. Her husband Paul Lagarde treasured it fully after Samary's death.

Unfortunately for Jeanne’s ambitions, neither portrait was a success with the critics and the general public.  Part of this was bad luck and bad placement.  Renoir’s friends who saw the full length portrait of Jeanne in his studio were enthralled. Nonetheless, the painting was placed on a very high place on a wall at the Exhibition of 1878 that was surrounded by many other workds. The high placement of the portrait caused the viewers to unable to see it properly. The best review it got as a description as “an entertaining portrait." Nevertheless, although Renoir and Samary parted their ways. Both married their partners they loved and had a happy life.

Summary

So what is with all the explanation of the Catherine the Great and Samary? I find both of  them very inspiring in their times. Both were ambitious women that knows what they wanted and strived to achieve their ambitions. Although Samary did not became a successful actress with prestigious roles she met someone (Paul Lagarde) who loved her dearly. She found her happiness asa wife and mother. On the other hand, Catherine did achieved her dreams but did she found happiness in her heart? However, I personally do not think she gained much love from her husband, Emperor Peter III. In June 1762, Catherine actually took an active part in a coup against her husband. He was killed "in an accident" allowing Catherine to become Russia's autocratic ruler.

Both of the women probably have not meet each other in life. But, they have so much in common  with the modern women nowadays. This thought sort of  fascinates and saddens me as both ideals only crossed path through the Puskin Museum. They were ambitious. They wanted to be successful. They wanted to be loved. In short, human beings from all over the world are all more alike, than are unalike. We vary physically from skin tones, languages, and maybe status. But, in the end, we are all the same. We are all the same.