François Flameng was born in Paris in 1856, son of artist and engraver Leopold Flameng (1831-1911). François Flameng trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After completing his studies, he joined two older and very successful artists Georges Clarin (1843-1919) and Jean Leon Gerome (1824-1904) on a painting journey to Italy.
He soon established a reputation as a society portrait painter; subjects included the French and Russian nobility as well as a full length portrait of Queen Alexandra (now hanging in the White Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace) and a small portrait of her husband King Edward VII.
His other area of expertise at that time was executing large paintings of historical subjects, usually set in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in particular of the Napoleonic wars. His fellow artists in Paris, John Singer Sargent and Paul César Helleu were close friends – from 1900 François Flameng’s studio was located in Paul Helleu’s house at 16, Rue de la, Glacière, Paris.
However, in the couple of years preceding the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, François Flameng’s style of painting underwent a dramatic change. His portraits and historical paintings were academic in approach and highly finished, much embellished with costume details, jewels, and sumptuous gardens and interiors.
In his mid-fifties he abandoned both his previous lifelong subject matter and style of painting for a more modern and pared down approach. He suddenly became involved with Sem, Jacqueline Forzane and the fashionable world of Deauville, racing, tennis tournaments, and aviation. There are many paintings depicting this new approach, one of the most relevant was painted at Ascot Racecourse with a three-quarter length portrait of Sem, Jacqueline Forzane in her distinctive tailleur and feathered hat standing in the distance, looking on. In a similar painting, a three-quarter length portrait of the famous Brazilian aviator Albert Santos Dumont, again Forzane in the background looking on, accompanied by her Borzi dog. In a pastel of a Parisian scene on the Champs Élysées a very distinctive and distinguished Jacqueline Forzane is observing the subjects in the foreground, a fashionable mother and small daughter. Perhaps François Flameng’s famous son-in-law and tennis champion had introduced him to this new, younger and fashionable set. Max Decugis had won many tennis championships during his career in France, Germany and Wimbledon. François Flameng painted a very powerful full length portrait of Decugis playing tennis in this new dynamic style just before the First World War.
François Flameng had become one of the legions of Jacqueline Forzane’s admirers. Sadly his involvement with this glamorous and ephemeral world was cut short with the shock of the outbreak of the First World War. François Flameng was one of the first artists to volunteer as a war artist, and was soon at the Front in a chauffeured driven car recording the horrors of war. Most of his war paintings are in the Musee de l'Armee in Paris and his drawings were used to illustrate newspapers and journals of the time.
François Léopold Flameng was made Commander de la legion d'honneur in 1920 and died in Paris in 1923.
Examples of François Flameng's works can be found in the following Museums and Galleries:
• Musée de l' Art Moderne, Paris
• Musée des Beaux Arts, Paris
• Musée de l’Armée, Paris
• Collection de la Comedie Francaise
• Museums in Rouen, Beaune and Liege in France
• The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia
• The Royal Collection in London
• The Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA
• Harvard University Art Museum in Massachusetts, USA
• The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., USA.
Les Élégantes à Deauville by François Léopold Flameng
This vibrant and evocative painting depicts the paddock at Deauville racecourse in the last full summer of racing (1913) before the First World War (1914-1918).
The dominant figure in the foreground is the renowned beauty and demi-mondaine Jacqueline Forzane. She was born in Paris in 1891, and by her early twenties was very much part of the beau monde who flocked to the resort of Deauville in Normandy for racing, polo, fashion and to be seen. The fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld said of her “she was the first modern woman”. He featured her twice in his short film ‘Once upon a time….’ starring Keira Knightly as Coco Chanel, recreating the opening of Chanel’s first boutique in Deauville in the summer of 1912.
Jacqueline Forzane‘s beauty was legendary on both sides of the Channel. She lived for a short time in Portland Place in London, and according to Cecil Beaton in his book ‘The Glass of Fashion’ published in 1954, “her long fair hair was worn straight and swathed close to her head, in modification of the Greek classical style: she foreshadowed the neat boyish head of the twenties. At a time when it was fashionable to lean somewhat forward in the manner of a swan triumphantly carving through the surface of a lake, Forzane adopted a contradictory stance, leaning backward with her pelvis brought forward, one foot trailing behind the other”, Cecil Beaton also described in his book how, when Forzane entered the restaurant of the Savoy Hotel in London, “people stood on their chairs to get a better view”. Her beauty and originality of dress, “severe tailleurs of broadcloth, complemented by spats and tight fitting toque trimmed with uncurled heron feathers”, made her the first fashion icon at a time when the majority of women were still in lace and frills. Indeed, during her sojourn in London, Viscount Castlerosse, later 6th. Earl of Kenmare, was desperate to marry her. Sadly for him, she returned to Paris.
Jacqueline Forzane continued to dazzle after the First World War by becoming a very successful silent movie star in France. Between 1919 and 1929 she made nine films. Perhaps the most memorable was acting the part of Comtesse Sabine Muffat in Jean Renoir’s film of the novel by Emile Zola, “Nana”.
She died in 1963.
One who followed, and chronicled the activities of le beau monde as they followed the social scene was Marie Joseph Georges Goursat, otherwise known as Sem. Georges Goursat was born in Périgueux in 1863. He was an insightful caricaturist, and by 1900 was established in Paris. Here he associated with Parisian society, where he observed the privileged, at the opera, the races or Maxim’s. His pictorial observations of this small world met with great success and he produced a series of albums. One of these was published in 1913 called ‘Tangoville sur Mer’ depicting the social round in Deauville. Jacqueline Forzane featured prominently in many of his drawings. One was of her and Coco Chanel at her new boutique (indeed this caricature of the two of them was displayed in the recent exhibition at the V&A of Chanel’s designs). Another showing Jacqueline Forzane full length was entitled Le Vrai & le Faux Chic (The True and False Chic) standing in her characteristic pose as described by Cecil Beaton. Yet another, most importantly, is called La Danse du Flamengo showing Jacqueline Forzane dancing with a partner, with the artist François Flameng seated at an easel in the background painting her. The drawing is also inscribed ‘La belle Jacqueline et son peintre ordinaire, François’ (The beautiful Jacqueline and her ordinary painter, François).