Other Trompe l’Oeils at Oak Spring I
Many trompe l’oeil paintings in different styles and of varying historical importance and artistic quality were acquired by the Mellons for their collections, particularly from the 1950s onward. While some works have since been dispersed, others still form part of the unique legacy that Paul and Bunny left behind. Among these are further paintings by Martin Battersby and Fernand Renard. In the invoice sent in April 1958 to Bunny, Battersby included, as mentioned above, the amount due for “one painting…Tilly Losch… framed.” This work is no longer at Oak Spring, but a reproduction in a 1960 issue of Vogue gives us an idea of what it must have looked like.111
A well-known personage in the beau monde on both sides of the Atlantic, Tilly Losch was the stage name of the actress, ballet dancer, choreographer, and painter Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine, who led a tempestuous life that included marriage for a period to Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon (1898–1987). Born in 1903 in Vienna to an aristocratic family, she spent the greater part of her life in the United States, where she appeared in various notable stage, ballet, and film productions during the 1940s and 1950s before dedicating herself with some success to painting. She died in New York in 1975. Martin Battersby composed a trompe l’oeil painting in Tilly Losch’s honor consisting of reproductions of photographs, portraits of the actress, and playbills of her performances attached with trompe l’oeil drawing pins and strips of wood to a panel. A butterfly is poised at the top of the painting, a symbol of this beautiful and captivating woman. It seems that the Mellons knew her, for in 1979 when the English literary agent Billy Hamilton was working on a biography of Mrs. Losch, he wrote to inform Bunny that the actress and artist
had kept a diary in which “your name frequently appears, especially during the Sixties” and to ask for confirmation that there were “two of Tilli’s pictures in your husband’s collection in Washington.”112 A body color painting by the British artist, designer, and illustrator Reginald John “Rex” Whistler (1905–1944)—presently hanging in the Oak Spring Garden Library—portrays Tilly Losch dressed as Joséphine de Beauharnais for a performance of Streamline—The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Palace Theatre in London on September 24, 1934.113 In addition to the greenhouse trompe l’oeil, various small paintings by Fernand Renard are in the collection at Oak Spring. In the archives are some cards with messages and charming sketches in tempera that were sent by the artist to Bunny from 1960 to 1978.114 Toward the end of the year 1960, by which time the decoration of the greenhouse had been completed, Fernand Renard sent Bunny a small still life painting in which various objects depicted in the greenhouse trompe l’oeil reappear. Three baskets sit on a table, one of which is filled with eggs and some stalks of wheat, and from another the handle of an implement protrudes, while strands of raffia dangle from a third basket placed somewhat in the background. Also on the table are a solitary egg, a small piece of fruit, a ball of string, and the pyramid-shaped glass bottle from the greenhouse trompe l’oeil, this time containing a few blue flowers. A creased sheet of paper bears the handwritten words “Bonne Année 1960,” while Renard’s signature is inscribed on the edge of the table. This work was undoubtedly sent by the artist as a gesture of esteem, but it has no direct connection to the commission on which he was working.115
Jacob van Hulsdonck, Still Life of Plums, Cherries, Strawberries and a Rose, detail, early to mid-seventeenth century, oil on copper, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA.
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