Apollonie Sabatier
| Apollonie Sabatier | ||
 Portrait of Apollonie Sabatier by Vincent Vidal | ||
| Background information | ||
| Born as: | Aglaé Joséphine Savatier | |
| Other names: | La Présidente | |
| Born | Apr 08, 1822 Charleville-Mézières, France | |
| Died | Jan 03, 1890 - age 68 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France | |
| Occupation: | Courtesan, salon hostess, artist's model | |
| Nationality: | French | |
Apollonie Sabatier (born Aglaé Joséphine Savatier;✦8 April 1822 – †3 January 1890) was a French entertainer, artist's model and courtesan, who became a salon hostess and bohemian muse to many of the French artists of 1850s Paris.
Biography
Aglaé Joséphine Savatier was born in Mézières. Her mother was Marguerite Martin, a laundress for Count Louis Harmand d'Abancourt, Aglaé's biological father. After Aglaé's birth, the count arranged that army sergeant André Savatier, stationed near the village, become her stepfather. Martin and Savatier were married in Paris on October 27, 1825.
The family moved to Paris, where Aglaé started singing at the Opéra Garnier after school. She changed her name to Apollonie and became a painter's model, and posed for the statue Femme piquée par un serpent (1847) by Auguste Clésinger, which is currently on display at the Musée d'Orsay. This image caused a scandal at the Salon of 1847, making the sculptor and model famous. The piece was commissioned by Belgian tycoon Alfred Mosselman, who was Sabatier's lover. The brass snake was hastily added before the exhibition.
Salon
Sabatier hosted a salon in Paris on Rue Frochot, near the Place Pigalle, where she met nearly all of the French artists of her time, such as Gérard de Nerval, Nina de Villard, Arsène Houssaye, Edmond Richard, Gustave Flaubert, Louis Bouilhet, Maxime du Camp, Gustave Ricard, Judith Gautier, daughter of Théophile; Ernest Feydeau, father of Georges Feydeau, Hector Berlioz, Paul de Saint-Victor, Alfred de Musset, Henry Monnier, Victor Hugo, Ernest Meissonnier, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Charles Jalabert, Ernesta Grisi, Gustave Doré, the musician Ernest Reyer, James Pradier, Auguste Préault, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Auguste Clésinger and Édouard Manet.
Gustave Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, and some others have written articles about her, and she was one of four women (Caroline, Jeanne Duval, herself, and Marie Daubrun) who inspired Charles Baudelaire's famous work Les Fleurs du Mal. Sabatier and Baudelaire were lovers from 1857 to 1862. Edmond de Goncourt was the first to nickname Sabatier 'La Présidente.' Gautier used the term in his Lettre à la Présidente, which was published in print in 1890.
One of her contemporaries described Sabatier as: "quite tall and well-proportioned and had very narrow joints and beautiful hands. Her hair was soft as silk, chestnut, and seemed to flatter itself in full waves with a golden sparkle around her head. Her skin was smooth and smooth, her features were regular, she had a small mouth, ready to laugh, and something scanty and witty, but above all, she distinguished herself by a haze of triumph that seemed to envelop her like a halo of happiness. She dressed with a lot of taste and fantasy. She did not follow fashion closely but created her own style. Great artists who frequented her Sunday meetings advised her and drew models for her".
In Gustave Courbet's 1855 painting L'Atelier du Peintre she is said to be shown together with her longtime lover, Alfred Mosselman. After his death, she was the longtime mistress to an art collector and donor to the Wallace fountains, Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet.
She also entered works for the Paris Salon and was among the artists rejected from the 1863 exhibition who chose to show their works in the Salon des Refusés (Miniatures, Nos. 503-505).
Sabatier died from influenza[6] at Neuilly-sur-Seine on 3 January 1890.
Bibliography
- (1985) Enlarging the change: the Princeton seminars in literary criticism, 1949-1951 (in en). Northeastern University Press. ISBN 9780930350628.
- (1890) Lettre à la présidente: voyage en Italie, 1850 (in fr). Secret Museum of the King of Naples.
- (1929) Cénacles et vieux logis parisiens (in fr). Tallandier.
- (1979) Madame Sabatier: Apollonie au pays des libertins (in fr). Edito-Service.
- (1969) The Bohemians: la vie de Bohème in Paris, 1830-1914 (in en). Macmillan.
- (1998) La Présidente: une égérie au XIXe siècle. Stock. ISBN 9782234049871.
External links
- Apollonie Sabatier on Wikimedia Commons
- Woman Bitten by a Snake by Auguste Clésinger
- An enumeration of the guests of her salon by André Bouchard
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Apollonie_Sabatier ]
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