In the period which became known as the Belle Epoque, European society – in France perhaps more than anywhere else – was going through an enormous transition. Social mobility increased for members of the wealthy bourgeoisie who, nevertheless, continued to try to emulate their aristocratic forebears. Culturally, it was an era when attendance at the theatre and at the salons was virtually mandatory for members of the beau monde with social ambitions. And this cultural world was dominated by a few powerful artists and intellectuals, among whom Sarah Bernhardt held a special place.

Bernhardt (1844-1923), the illegitimate daughter of a Dutch-Jewish courtesan, had a lengthy career as a French stage actress. She was feted by European royalty, and toured North and South America as well as Australia. She was also an accomplished painter and sculptor with over fifty surviving works, several of which are today in major museums. However, despite her great success, she led such an extravagant and eccentric lifestyle that she often had to depend on the generosity of wealthy male lovers, including Henri, Hereditary Prince de Ligne, with whom she had a son at the age of twenty. Her acting career spanned the period of the 1860s until the early age of movies. Plagued by ill health but still considered a star, she continued to work to great acclaim until the end of her life.

In 1903, Bernhardt was at the height of her powers and one of the most famous women of the day. In that year she took on the role of Hermione from the play Andromache, written in 1667 for the court of Louis XIV by the great French playwright Jean Racine. Hermione, driven to desperation after having been rejected by Pyrrhus, commissions Orestes to murder him. The price is that she will marry Orestes who is in love with her. However, Hermione repents, and when she hears that Pyrrhus has died, she scorns Orestes and runs off to kill herself over Pyrrhus’ body. Orestes, tormented with visions of Hermione and the Furies, is driven insane.

The present bust depicts the vision of Hermione in her moment of wrath, face hardened with anger and her hair writhing expressively with ‘hissing snakes’. It is a work by the celebrated sculptor Prosper d’Épinay (1836-1914), who had already sculpted Bernhardt several times during the course of her career. Known as the ‘Sculptor of sovereigns’ due to his success sculpting portraits of royalty and high society, d’Épinay has here created a portrait that is both rooted in antique sources such as the Rondanini Medusa, and thoroughly modern in its simplicity and expressive power. It harkens back to an earlier representation d’Épinay had executed in 1866 of the Head of Medusa – also in terracotta – which is now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The bust of Hermione therefore represents a portrait by one of the most important sculptors of Belle Epoque France, depicting Sarah Bernhardt, a woman famed for pushing the boundaries – both artistically and socially – of the role of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.