PARIS.- On Wednesday, 17th of December, as part of the Old master paintings, classical furniture and works of art sale, held by Pierre Bergé & associés at Drouot, an oil on canvas by Jacques-Emile Blanche will be offered for bid: the portrait of the opera singer Marya Freund and her children.

Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942), was altogether a French painter, engraver and writer. He was a self-made painter who acquired a famous reputation as a portraitist. He was a friend of the « Surrealists » and of the « dada » group, such as Jean Cocteau, whose mother was very close to the Blanche family. He was elected a member of the French « Académie des Beaux Arts » in 1935.

A portrait seldom displays two generations of great artists. Nevertheless, this is the case of this many-faceted painting. At the center of the scene, stands the opera singer Marya Freund. A celebrity of the music world, interpreter of the most well-known composers of the pre and post 1914 era, particularly noticed in the intellectual avant-garde of the period, she notably devoted her talent to Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler. Of the first, she would be the official interpreter of the famous Pierrot Lunaire after having created it in Paris under the direction of Darius Milhaud and would be involved in the creation of the Gurrelieder in 1913. Of the latest, she will be remembered for her contribution to the creation of the Kindertotenlieder.

She is therefore represented here in full glory. Her voice is also linked to the main composers of her time: in particular Ravel, Fauré, Debussy, Poulenc as for the French, but also Stravinski or Szymanovski.

Born in Poland, in Breslau, in 1876, Marya Freund died in Paris in 1966, naturalized French. Her son Doda (1905-1997), another celebrity of his time, is represented on her left with a look of a Fragonard faune. Born in 1905 and therefore shown here at the age of eight, he will meet a very unique destiny. Archetype of the exceptionally gifted child, capable of everything, he will at first chose to lead a painter career that Picasso will encourage. In this way, from 1921 to 1926, he becomes the pupil (student) of Jacques-Emile Blanche, the symbolic portrait painter of the intellectual society of this period. This portrait was realized in 1913, but remained in Blanche workshop because Marya Freund didn’t like it. She later changed her mind and understood the meaning of the portrait. Remained unframed for a long time, it was finally displayed in the Freund home in 1925. Therefore, probably, this slightly short frame, that hides part of the dedication, seems to have been the only one since it was adopted by the family.

However, Doda, didn’t pursue his career as a painter and opted, following the example of his mother, for the muse Euterpe. From 1928 to 1940, he spent his life on board of Transatlantic liners, and began to participated in musical creations as baritone-bass in 1932. His name has remained associated with the interpretations of Frederic Chopin and Franz Schubert lieder. He became a bosom friend of Toscanini, and also of Arthur Schnabel, of Wanda Landowska, of the Polish pianists Miecsylaw Horszoski and of Arthur Rubinstein, of Leonard Bernstein, of Nadia Boulanger, or Princess Edmond de Polignac (born Winaretta Singer), a famous patron.

The Second World War would surprise him during an international tour. He was in the Sunda Islands, when it was declared. He couldn’t come back to France. He rejoined San Francisco, after a six month wait, and then Washington. There, he was virtually adopted by the Bliss, the former owners of Dumbarton Oaks, who had just given it to Harvard University. They had been intimate friends during the long stay of the Bliss in Paris from 1912 to 1919.

He distinguished himself by organizing concerts, in order to raise funds to support the exiled Polish army. Then he joined the American army after Pearl Harbor, which allowed him to acquire the nationality of his host country.

In 1945, one found him in Germany where he was attached to the famous « MFAA » (monuments, fine arts, and archives program), within which he would play an essential role.

Taking back from 1947 brilliant one soloist’s career, particularly in the States, his name became inseparable of Bach and Chopin works. In 1965, he put an end to his soloist’s career, but kept directing the festive musical season of Royaumont, or teaching music, involving Nadia Boulanger’s inheritance. He created the « Journées Musicales de Langeais ». He died in Blois in 1997. His memoirs have been published in 1999, under the title « Dodascalies ».

His brother Stefan Freund, represented on the right, was also an officer in the American army, during the Second World War. Because Stefan couldn’t pronounce the name of his younger brother when he was a child, he get accustomed to call him Doda. Later, Conrad Freund attached the two first names to form his artist’s name.

This work had not been disclosed until now, apart from an exhibition in Venice in 1938. It comes directly from Doda’s entourage. As the result of an anti-Semitic attempt, Stefan face was stabbed. The family decided to keep the painting as it was, « in memoriam ».

An analysis of the work:
Stylistically, this painting is a crossroads: between two styles of the painter, between two periods of history where the First World War caesura will prove to be definitive, between two temptations, the one of naturalism without concession and the one of the evanescent impression.

Under wiser aspects than the gossip portraits for which Blanche’s name is celebrated, this painting which can appear academic at first glance is in reality very modern, by his artistic choices and the intimist approach of the personality of the models.

It’s also a very elaborate psychological study. One can find in it the chromatic virtuosity, together with the impressionist brushwork of the Blanche of the 1890/1900’s, but also the announcement of the more synthetic features of his post First World War manner.

The carnal density of the models is in proportion of their maturity, the artist leaving to childhood a flavor of fuzziness, while seizing with acuity the personality and fate of those represented.

How not to be moved by this keen and witty look of young Doda, already out of the context and autonomous? And this weird association of the three bodies which seem to support each other in a natural order, but reflect in the same time the inexorable estrangement? Looks are diverging, expressing so radically different essences, despite of the artificial unity of the family link….

Portrait of complex contrasts under the misleading familiar appearance of an academic snapping, this painting is all but conventional. It offers the evocation of a world, coming with its codes and conventions, but let us guess, a unique destiny, in its psychological intensity outstandingly, but subtly, explored.