Charlotte Marie Valentine de Laborde
Valentine Delessert in a dark dress and white bonnet sitting with arms crossed staring away
Portrait of Valentine Delessert (née Valentine de Laborde)
Born1 January 1806
Died13 May 1894
NationalityFrench
Known forArt collecting and her business
Partner(s)Prosper Merimee, Maxime du Camp, and Charles de Remusat
ChildrenEdouard Delessert

Charlotte Marie Valentine Joséphine de Laborde, also known as Valentine Delessert (1 January 1806 – 13 May 1894) was a French socialite and a Passy-Paris salon holder.[1] She is also known as a mistress of French writer Prosper Mérimée, French writer and photographer Maxime du Camp, and French politician and philosopher Charles de Remusat.[2]

Life

Valentine de Laborde was born on 1 January 1806. Her grandfather, Marquis Jean-Joseph de Laborde, was a famous financier and slave trader, and her father, Count Alexandre de Laborde, was a director of the National Archives.[3] On 1 June 1824, she married the banker Gabriel Delessert.[4] He was a prefect of Seine police from 1836 to 1848.[3]

In the 1830s de Laborde became a mistress of French writer Prosper Merimee and had a strong influence on his work, in particular on creation of his characters from Colomba and Carmen.[5] Merimee first met de Labourde in 1830, and being fascinated with her beauty and wit he started a courtship that lasted for six years until 16 February 1836 when she became his mistress. Their relationship was quite unstable and in 1844, de Labourde found a new lover, however it was not the final breakup. In 1848, Valentine followed her husband to England, as he had to go into exile after the abdication of Louis-Philippe, and from there sent only rare letters to Merimee.[6] In the early 1850s she broke up with Merimee to become a mistress of another French writer Maxime du Camp,[7] but soon left him for the politician Charles de Remusat.[2] De Laborde inspired Gustave Flaubert to create the character of Madame Dambreuse in his L’éducation sentimentale.[1]

Under July Monarchy, de Laborde held a famous salon in her hotel in Passy that attracted main figures of the romantic generation: Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Adolphe Thiers, Eugene Delacroix, Prosper Merimee, Maxime du Camp, Emile de Girardin, Alfred de Musset, Charles de Montalembert, Minghetti, the future Empress of France, Eugenie de Montijo, and the Countess de Castiglione.[1] She was also known as private art collector.[8]

Under the Second French Empire, de Laborde became a part of the entourage of the Empress Eugenie and held an eminent social position until her death.[9]

Valentine de Laborde died on 13 May 1894 at the age of 88.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Notre-Dame de Paris.
  2. 1 2 Proust, Marcel (2018-11-01). The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18962-9.
  3. 1 2 "CTHS - LABORDE, ép. DELESSERT Charlotte Marie Valentine". cths.fr. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  4. ↑ "Valentine Delessert (1806-1894)". data.bnf.fr. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  5. ↑ "Prosper Mérimée, aquarelliste-reporter". Le Magazine de Encheres. Retrieved 2020-02-25.
  6. ↑ Stewart, Jon (2016-12-05). Volume 5, Tome III: Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions - Literature, Drama and Music. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-87451-9.
  7. ↑ Aubenas, Sylvie; Gray, Gustave Le; Museum, J. Paul Getty (2002). Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884. Getty Publications. p. 306. ISBN 978-0-89236-671-2.
  8. ↑ Preti, Monica (2017-07-05). Delicious Decadence ?The Rediscovery of French Eighteenth-Century Painting in the Nineteenth Century. Routledge. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-351-56992-7.
  9. ↑ INHA (2010-02-09). "LABORDE, Léon-Emmanuel-Simon-Joseph (vicomte, comte, puis marquis de)". L'Institut National d'histoire de l'art (in French). Retrieved 2020-02-25.
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