Hoops and loops and flowing flounces

Does art speak to you? If so, what does it say? And what would James McNeill Whistler’s 1881’s Harmony in Pink and Grey (Portrait of Lady Meux) say? Wonder no longer.

In 1929, English-American journalist James Howard Bridge published Portraits and Personalities: Imaginary Conversations in the Frick Galleries (Aldine Book Company, 280 Maddison Avenue, New York). This was a fanciful account of the subjects of the paintings in the Frick coming to life, walking about the galleries and talking to each other.

In 1914, Bridge (1856–1939) was appointed private secretary to US industrialist, financier and patron of the arts Henry Frick (1849-1919). Bridge also said he was the curator of the collection, a fact disputed by Frick’s daughter, Helen, and this later resulted in a court case for libel and slander, which Bridge lost.

Frick’s private art collection would later form the basis of the world-famous Frick Collection, established 1935. This collection is now home to Harmony in Pink and Grey (Portrait of Lady Meux), Bridge claimed Frick himself was indirectly responsible for this book. "If only they could talk!" Frick said about his collection of portraits. 

"They can and do!" Bridge answered. "And what do they say?" asked Frick.

As the two men looked at the paintings, Bridge let his imagination run wild and told him. Later, these imaginations were published. Lady Meux comes to life in the gallery and, once again, finds herself an outsider.

In a chapter entitled Meux’s Entire Bridge writes: “The female form divine may easily lose its divinity. The ugly fashions of Victorian days were brought into unfavorable contrast with those of earlier times by the sudden appearance of Lady Meux in the disfiguring dress of her day. Crowned with a huge pink hat, tightly corseted, with pouter-pigeon bust, a billowing 'bustle' at the rear, with hoops and loops and flowing flounces ending in a train of massed laces to sweep the floor, this pretty woman was at a pathetic disadvantage in the regal presence of the ladies of Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence.”

Bridge imagines Lady Meux near the gallery door looking about her with obvious disquiet: “The exquisitely dressed personages grouped about the gallery were too much taken with their own affairs to give more than a curious look at the stranger from another part of the house; and, in her embarrassment, Lady Meux turned to leave the room just as Fezensac entered. At a glance, he saw that the lady was pretty and in some distress; and being familiar with her style of dress which did not hide her girlish grace-was attracted rather than intimidated by its Victorian ugliness. Moreover he recalled having seen her in Whistler's studio, where he had spent many hours posing for his own two portraits.”

Fezensac was Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac,a French dandy, poet, art collector, and critic. He was also a friend and patron of Whistler, and the subject of Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, painted by Whistler between 1891 and 1892, which is now in the Frick Collection.

Bridge’s imaginings continue … 

"Lady Meux, if I mistake not," said Fezensac with a low bow.

"Good lord! but I'm glad to see somebody who knows me. What sort of a show is this - a fancy ball?" the lady, who was known for her vulgarity as well as her good nature.

The chivalric Frenchman led her to a seat and standing gallantly beside her, told her what she sought to know. She heard the story with many ejaculations of surprise, not always couched in the choicest language. "There goes a sanguinary rat!" she once exclaimed as she leaped upon a table. And the adjective she used was not that here quoted, but that derived from the medieval "by-our-Lady!"

Bridge then switches to what he believes is a factual account of Lady Meux. Where I disagree with the facts, I comment in brackets and bold text..

“Susan Langton (Langdon) was not a barmaid (debatable), nor yet a Gaiety actress as often stated, but a music-hall divette at a second rate place of entertainment at Brighton, Sussex. Sir Henry Meux, when a very young man saw her, admired her prettiness and married her, as he declared at the time, in order to spite his guardians and trustees. He never regretted having done so — at least openly, as in his first declaration; and by all appearances he grew fond of her and left her his entire fortune when he died. The brewery, from which came this fortune, was founded more than a hundred years before he was born. It became famous at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Henry Meux, with a genius for advertising, built a colossal vat, forty feet high, holding four thousand barrels of ‘Meux Entire’. He gave out hat a million people could have marched past this great vat and have each taken a pint of stout from it before emptying it. In 1814 the vat burst, and the flood of beer swept into Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, carried people off their feet, half-drowned some, and made hundreds drunk. The catastrophe was the talk of the town for weeks, and gave ‘Meux Entire’ a fortune's worth of advertising. It was debated in Parliament, which ordered the return of the amount of internal revenue paid on the beer thus lost. In 1831, William the Fourth conferred a baronetcy on Henry Meux, thus inaugurating the ‘Beerage’.Lady Meux, given control of her husband's wealth, and holidaying in Egypt, tried to buy the obelisk at Heliopolis, sister to the 'Cleopatra's needles' in Paris, London and New York. Failing in this, she got her husband to buy Temple Bar, then being removed as an obstruction to traffic in the Strand. This historic monument, on which the severed heads of traitors were once exposed, was re-erected, stone by stone, at the entrance to Theobald's Park, the Meux country seat on the borders of Hertfordshire, where, framed by trees centuries old, it still stands. Lady Meux developed a love of all things Egyptian, and financed several important publications of studies made by the experts of the British Museum. She also made a valuable collection herself, which, at her death, went to the British Museum.

“She married a second time (this is not true), and left her great wealth to her husband, who had taken the name of Meux (this was Hedworth Lambton). He it was who sold the portrait now in the Frick Collection.

“Such in brief was the story told of this kindhearted woman who, without education or refinement, and ridiculously eccentric, rendered great service in the cause of science. She also helped Whistler over the rough road he trod after the outrageous fiasco of the Ruskin suit, when he was held to be nothing but an eccentric and mystifying painter of nocturnes. Patrons passed his door, all but Lady Meux and Lady Archibald Campbell. Of Lady Meux he painted three portraits (The first portrait, Arrangement in Black, No 5, is now in the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The third, sometimes known as Portrait of Lady Meux in Furs, was, apparently, destroyed by Whistler before completion following a quarrel with Lady Meux). While posing for the last of these her usual good nature failed her. Annoyed at some exhibition of nervousness in the harassed artist, she turned towards him saying: ‘See here, Jimmy Whistler! You keep a civil tongue in that head of yours, or I will have some one in to finish these portraits you have made of me!’

“Whistler fairly danced with rage. He came up to Lady Meux, his long brush tightly grasped against his side. He stammered, sputtered, and finally gasped out: "How dare you! How dare you!" Lady Meux did not sit again, neither did she send someone to ‘finish’ her portraits.

“There was an amusing caricature in the London Graphic in 1911, representing Whistler as painting all three portraits of Lady Meux at once. When the present portrait was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882, with several other pictures, the critics were still inclined to find material for mirth in Whistler's art. But from this time onward, he was no longer alone in fighting his battles.

“The portrait of Lady Meux was one of the works that served to turn the tide in his favor. Happy would he have been had he known that it would sell for more than two hundred thousand dollars, and find in his native land a home for all time in surroundings of great beauty.”