CHIMAY, Madame la Princesse Alphonse de.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Album amicorum. A friendship album containing an original drawing by Marie Laurencin, preserved among an assortment of drawings and inscriptions from aristocratic friends compiled for "Madame la Princesse Alphonse de Chimay". The recipient is identified by an illuminated page dated January 1902, inscribed "Juvat Pietas, à Madame la Princesse Alphonse de Chimay" and surmounted by the arms of the Princes of Chimay.Contributors include figures from literary, artistic, and aristocratic circles such as Christian Bérard (known as "Bébé"), Anna de Noailles, Louise Héger (landscape drawing dated 1897), Paul Musurus, Victor du Bled, Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, Léon de Montesquiou, Gerold Laffitte, Charles de Pape (a medieval-style illuminated page), and Madeleine de Paper, alongside members of the de Broglie and de La Rochefoucauld families. A signed watercolour by Marguerite, Princesse de la Tour et Taxis, dated Cannes, 1903, further situates the album within a transnational network of European aristocracy.Laurencin (1883-1956) contributed a delicately rendered portrait of a lady in black ink. She emerged as a significant figure within the Parisian avant-garde and is recognised as one of the earliest women associated with Cubism.The precise original owner of the album remains uncertain, as several women bore the title Princesse de Chimay during this period. It is, however, plausibly associated with Mathéa Le Jeune de Münsbach (1871-1964), who married Alphonse de Riquet de Caraman, Pr

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