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Luisa Casati (1922) by Man Ray.<\/em><\/p>\n Today’s post is another in the series of irregular art essays by Sander Bink. The subject this time is Luisa Casati (1881\u20131957), the Italian heiress who burnt through a fortune living extravagantly while being drawn or painted by many of the most notable artists of her time. (I did my own very stylised portrait of the Marchesa for Bruce Sterling’s Pirate Utopia<\/em><\/a>, a novel where Casati briefly appears among the cast of real and fictional characters.) As before with Sander’s posts, Carel de Ner\u00e9e tot Babberich is one of the artists under discussion. Thanks, Sander!<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Carel de Ner\u00e9e around 1905.<\/em><\/p>\n Many artists have paid homage to the ‘living artwork’ and legendary fashion icon Luisa Casati. Artists such as Man Ray, Paul-C\u00e9sar Helleu, Giovanni Boldini, L\u00e9on Bakst, Kees van Dongen, Alastair, Romaine Brooks and Giacomo Balla have immortalised her. Legend has it that a certain fascinating Dutch artist should also be added to this list: Carel de Ner\u00e9e tot Babberich (1880\u20131909). (Previously: 1<\/a> & 2<\/a>)<\/p>\n Luisa Casati with Greyhound (1908) by Giovanni Boldini. Private collection.<\/em><\/p>\n By 1930, Casati’s decadent and luxurious lifestyle had left her millions in debt. To escape her creditors, she moved to London. In the years before her death in 1957, she was seen scavenging for food in rubbish bins. In these final years, she naturally preferred to look to the past rather than the present, making lists of all those who had portrayed her then fading glory. Remarkably, one of these features De Ner\u00e9e. Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Yaccarino, in their classic biography Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati<\/em>, write about this period:<\/p>\n Whereas her evenings were absorbed by occult passions, the Marchesa spent part of her days writing lists. One was an inventory of the renowned personages she had known. There were others cataloguing the many artists, famous and lesser known, who had represented her. The difficulty of creating a comprehensive index of contributors to the \u2018Casati Gallery\u2019 is compounded both by Luisa\u2019s incomplete and inaccurate records and by the lack of information concerning the minor portraitists, such as Mrs. Leslie Cotton and Karel de Ner\u00e9e tot Babberich and those who were simply wealthy dilettantes. Boldini, John, van Dongen, and Epstein are noted alongside Hohenlohe, Nikolai Riabushinsky, theatrical designer Oliver Messel, and Eduardo Chicharro, director of the Spanish Academy of Fine Art in Rome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The footnote to this paragraph states:<\/p>\n Christophe Henri Karel de Ner\u00e9e tot Babberich (1880\u20131909) was a little-known Dutch artist whose pen and ink work is highly reminiscent of Martini and Alastair. Although there is little material documenting Casati’s association with or influence on the artist, many of the highly stylized and bizarre female subjects of his drawings share a more than coincidental resemblance to the Marchesa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n De Ner\u00e9e did, indeed, draw several dark-eyed female figures in extravagant dresses, all of which could easily pass for a portrait of Casati. In the book The Marchesa Casati: Portraits of a Muse<\/em> (2009), Ryersson and Yaccarino give an overview of all the works of art based on Casati. A drawing by De Ner\u00e9e of a very slender figure with dark eyes is identified as a portrait of Casati and dated 1905.<\/p>\n Het schone beeld (The beautiful image, 1900\u201301) by Carel de Ner\u00e9e. Private Collection. Estate of Barry Humphries.<\/em><\/p>\n The authors were not 100% sure of this identification, but due to the almost complete lack of documentation on De Ner\u00e9e’s life and work at the time, they chose this drawing. In an email to me in 2010, the authors withdrew this identification because of this lack of documentation. It is actually a drawing dating from 1900\u201301, based on a story by Henri Borel. Of course, we immediately set about trying to find out which of De Ner\u00e9e’s drawings could be a portrait of Casati.<\/p>\n In their email, Ryersson and Yaccarino give some more information:<\/p>\n In the papers left behind by the Marchesa, after her death in 1957, was a list she had made herself of those artists who had done her portraits. Babberich was on that list. His portrait of her, done in pencil, was from around 1905. We do not know how they met, but the Marchesa travelled frequently and extensively and was fond of the work of such symbolist artists as Alberto Martini, Gustav Mossa, and Alastair, so it is not surprising that Babberich caught her attention somehow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n De Ner\u00e9e and Casati make an excellent match indeed. \u2018She was only too pleased to promote artists whose aesthetic she felt an affinity with, and those whose work was so contrary to popular taste\u2019, Ryersson and Yaccarino write in Portraits of a Muse<\/em>. In 2015, I began working on what has now become the first full-length biography of De Ner\u00e9e. Research showed that De Ner\u00e9e actually deregistered from The Hague in October 1905 in order to settle in Rome.<\/p>\n Rome travel guide with De Ner\u00e9es’ annotation “Roma, October 1905”. Private collection.<\/em><\/p>\n One reason for this was that, from 1905, De Ner\u00e9e\u2019s life was increasingly set in the aristocratic and very wealthy circles of southern Europe. In 1907, for example, he met Gabriel d’Annunzio, a lover of Casati’s, in Florence. Perhaps he had met him before. And in 1908, for example, he drew a portrait of Baroness Clementine Maria von Reuter (1855\u20131941), daughter of the wealthy Baron Paul von Reuter (1816\u20131899), founder of Reuters news agency. (Private collection, Netherlands).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Casati spent most of 1905 in Rome. She hosted many parties for the European elite. By the end of the year, she had a large villa built on Via Piemonte. It was probably there that De Ner\u00e9e met her and drew her portrait. De Ner\u00e9e became known for Symbolist works but also drew naturalistic portraits. Several were done on the occasion of a dinner or party.<\/p>\n I based the research for my biography largely on the documentation collected by De Ner\u00e9e expert Dick Veeze (born 1947) in the 1970s. Veeze’s documentation of De Ner\u00e9e’s works is the basis for the catalogue of works appended to the biography.<\/p>\n Around 1970, Veeze, unaware of the possible connection with Casati, dated an untitled pencil portrait of a woman with dark eyes and short hair to 1905 on the basis of style and technique.<\/p>\n Luisa Casati (1905) by Carel de Ner\u00e9e. Pencil drawing, 1905. Private Collection. Estate of Barry Humphries.<\/em><\/p>\n Now that we know that De Ner\u00e9e was in Rome in 1905 and that he made a pencil portrait of Casati that year, this brooding portrait is the most likely candidate for his portrait of Luisa Casati.<\/p>\n John Galliano for Dior, tribute to Luisa Casati. 2007\u201308.<\/em><\/p>\n When asked, Ryersson and Casati were also in full agreement with this hypothesis. Sadly, however, Ryersson died early last year<\/a> and so cannot see the actual portrait. It will be shown in the upcoming De Ner\u00e9e exhibition, which I curated as guest curator for the Dordrechts Museum<\/a>. There will also be forty other magnificent De Ner\u00e9es, most of which have rarely or never been exhibited before. The biography<\/a> will be published then.\u00a0 For now, only in Dutch. If enough people are interested, and if it’s possible to finance it, it will hopefully be published in English as well.<\/p>\n See you there!<\/p>\n Carine Roitfeld re-imagined as Casati by Karl Lagerfeld, 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2022 Further reading: The Casati Archives<\/a><\/p>\n Previously on { feuilleton } Luisa Casati (1922) by Man Ray. Today’s post is another in the series of irregular art essays by Sander Bink. The subject this time is Luisa Casati (1881\u20131957), the Italian heiress who burnt through a fortune living extravagantly while being drawn or painted by many of the most notable artists of her time. (I did … Continue reading “De Ner\u00e9e and Luisa Casati”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: De Ner\u00e9e and Luisa Casati","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,57,44,12,45],"tags":[12793,2503,7325,13881,13879,13882,13880,10908,3478,241,13878,3961,13877],"class_list":["post-27930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-fashion","category-painting","category-photography","category-symbolists","tag-barry-humphries","tag-bruce-sterling","tag-carel-de-neree","tag-carine-roitfeld","tag-dick-veeze","tag-giovanni-boldini","tag-john-galliano","tag-karl-lagerfeld","tag-luisa-casati","tag-man-ray","tag-michael-yaccarino","tag-sander-bink","tag-scot-d-ryersson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7gu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"casati1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/casati1.jpg\")
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\n\u2022 The art of Henk Bremmer, 1871\u20131956<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Jacob Bendien, 1890\u20131933<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Henricus Jansen, 1867\u20131921<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Antoon van Welie, 1866\u20131956<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Simon Moulijn, 1866\u20131948<\/a>
\n\u2022 Ren\u00e9 Gockinga revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gockinga\u2019s Bacchanal and an unknown portrait of Fritz Klein<\/a>
\n\u2022 More from the Decadent Dutch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"