Portrait of Gabrielle Thérèse COUSSIN - "A Lady with parrot"
Photography
Inventory number
2022.7.8.1.PH.VI.1875.FRAuthor:
Alphonse Justin LIEBERT (French, 1826 - 1913)Description
Paper photograph pasted on cardstock depicting actrice Gabrielle Thérèse COUSSIN known as Mademoiselle LINDA. She is wearing a bustle plaid dress of tartan silk with a gathered-up overskirt supported by a trained bustle. The dress has a short-waisted bodice with a neckline trimmed with sheer ruffles and ¾-length ruffled sleeves. The skirt is ornamented with ruffles, ruching, and tassels. The woman’s hairstyle reflects the silhouette of her dress in a waterfall style with knots and braids that cascade long curls down the back. The woman is posed next to a parrot on a post.The photograph is known as "A Lady with parrot" but it is a publicity photograph representing the actress Mlle LINDA. The photograph became famous by illustrating the cover of the book of Alison GERNSHEIM’s book "Victorian and Edwardian Fashion : A Photographic Survey".
Miss LINDA was a member of the Palais Royal theater around March 1874. She made the cover of the review "Paris-Théatre" in October of the following year for a vaudeville by the playwright Pierre-Antoine-Auguste THIBOUST entitled "A husband in cotton." Comedy that she will play in the provinces and in particular in Nice where the local newspaper: La vie mondaine à Nice, praises her beauty and describes her toilet with precision .... more than her acting itself. Like many pretty young women in the middle of the 19th century, Mademoiselle LINDA embarked on a career as a theater actress while probably having a career as a cocotte in parallel. Some, like Sarah BERNHARDT, met a great success, however most of them have only the beauty but not the talent and were quickly forgotten. Miss LINDA was one of them, her elegance and beauty left her posterity with a few photos and a acid description by the novelist Hector MALOT in 1895 (perhaps one of her discarded admirers) : "At the head of this troupe as the first role in comedy and as the first singer was Mademoiselle Linda, who held with equal superiority the employment of the Desclees and the Schneiders. This Linda had appeared a few years earlier on the stage of the Opéra-Comique, but age coming without talent, and the beauty or at least the charm of youth departing, she had been obliged to abandon Paris for foreign countries first, and then for the provinces. Fortunately, what is insufficient in Paris, Florence or Vienna, may be perfectly sufficient in Condé-le-Chatel or Carpentras; that was what had happened to Miss Linda. Her performances had caused a sensation, and she had inflamed the hearts of five or six young people who, by name and fortune, had made themselves rulers of the city...".
Materials
Analog photographyCardboard
Origin
October 1875 Paris, FranceDimensions
Length : 11 cmHeight : 17.2 cm
Related objects
Paris-Théâtre N°125 front pageVictorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey