The Boldini works in the Masp Collection – Portrait of a Man in a Top Hat: The Poet Hanvin, the Man of Le Figaro, Lady with a Straw Hat (Morning Promenade) and Seated Woman (The Conversation) – were studied in detail by Camesasca at the time of the Masp Exhibition in Switzerland (Fondation Gianadda 1988). The conclusions of these studies were the major source for this catalogue commentary and the next two. Other information on the painting and the sitter whose name and relations with the French journal Le Figaro were reported in the catalogue of the 1932 Venice Biennial. Camesasca cautiously proposes an association with a pencil sketch (19 x 14.5 cm, Ferrara, private collection), published by Doria (1982, p. 74), dated from 1900. If correct, this relation would imply that both works should be dated around 1895-1900, or slightly later than he previously proposed (1970 n. 224: 1890).
There is a particularly interesting detail of the picture that was not mentioned by Camesasca. The portrait is represented beside two images, of which at least one is a Japanese etching. The reproduction of this etching, rather than just the personal taste of the artist, is indicative of a parti pris, of an active adherence to the European vogue, especially Parisian, patronized at the end of the century by a progressivist trend of critics, men of culture, and of course, artists such as Manet, Van Gogh, Whistler, and many others. This is not surprising inasmuch as Hanvin was a dandy with access to the newspapers in which Proust published his first writings, and one who took care to associate his image with the bon combat for the triumph of Modern Art.
The label on the back of the painting states: “n. 150, inv. At. Boldini Emilia Cardona Boldini” indicating that the work was in the master’s atelier at the time of his death. It was not included in the publication that his widow devoted to this group of works in 193y, probably because this painting was sold before the book was written. Camesasca (1970, n. 346) hesitated but tended to date it “a little after 1902, especially considering the affinity of style with an identical theme, En promenade (Camesasca 1970, n. 385) which seems correct to date around 1904-1905. The existence of two quite similar compositions is not atypical for Boldini, who was prodigal in making both large and small sketches when approaching a particularly difficult theme (...) Paintings like this one give rise to the question of whether Boldini in any way fore-shadowed Futurism. Denying this relation, Borgorelli affirms that the painter of Ferrara seems, to the contrary, not to have ignored Maxwell’s theory of light (1864), still prevailing prior to the Einstein revolution. Therefore, the manner in which Boldini sought to integrate the subject matter with its surroundings diffusing it in a dematerialized and vibrant space means that his work moves closer not only to Toulouse-Lautrec and Medardo Rosso, but also to Giacometti and to other contemporary artists”.
Irrespective of the identity of the model for this portrait, the conception, composition, and style of this work are quite similar to the ones on the portrait of Madame Georges Victor-Hugo (119 x 102 cm), exhibited in Paris at the 1904 Salon, which provides supplementary confirmation for the date 1904-1905 proposed by Camesasca (1970, n. 386). This painting, above all, is a clear example of how a Boldini female portrait is indifferent to psychological exploration, and how it proposes, on the contrary, to transfigure the model into an ideal of elegance, almost immaterial, and implacably biological in its approach to the female world. The writing of Huysmans and Valéry on the female model in Degas brought out a dimension of this artist that is somewhat misogynic and which, in Boldini, is manifested in an image that is simultaneously inverted and equivalent.
— Unknown authorship, 1998
