With his magnificent moustache, Coubertin himself was a candidate for the portrait.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, was laying the groundwork for the first 1896 Games. In 1892 the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés D’Aviron was organized and held the first European Championship regatta. The decade of the 1890’s was a pivotal time in rowing, and France the locus of momentous events.
Luque’s ability to capture the essence of his subject is demonstrated by the fashion historian, who sensed the rower’s keen competitiveness. Manuel Luque was an artist of note he knew many of the important personages in 1890’s Paris, and drew or painted them. Luque also became one of the most prominent caricaturists of his day, first working for La Caricature, then Monde Parisien, Le Figaro and Le Rire. In 1887 he participated in the Impressionist exhibit at the Salon du Champs de Mars and the Salon des Refuses. Luque (Spanish 1854-1918) was an Andalucian painter who studied and worked first in Madrid, and then, beginning in 1874, in Paris. Identifying the artist, Manuel Luque de Soria, shed additional light on the subject. His eyeglass and unflinching gaze complete the studly look begun by his knotty muscles and competitively clenched jaw.” (Jessica Glasscock, Making a Spectacle: A Fashionable History of Glasses, Hachette Group, 2021) “… the 1893 illustration provides a portrait of such an idealized sportsman’s use of the monocle. The anonymous rower print was reproduced in a history of eyewear and appraised as something of a dreamboat, the author positing that Lepron’s image contained both “butch and aristocratic associations.” Those were the only clues to the subject’s identity. The rower wore the hat of the Rowing-Club de Paris.
A print version of the portrait was found floating namelessly in the vastness of the internet, having adorned the cover of Le Soleil du Dimanche. Champion of France in the single scull 1890, 1892, and 1893, Champion of the Seine in 18, and Champion of the Marne from 1888 to 1894 Lepron could rest on his oars, his name would live on.Īnd yet, a mere 130 years later, his forgotten portrait turned up in a Pennsylvania auction house, his identity a mystery. Émile Lepron achieved sporting immortality.
0 kommentar(er)
