My look is a cocktail. I'm not as nicely turned out as the french, but I don't care like the English.
- Jane Birkin
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John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Hugh Hammersley, 1892
Walter Richard Sickert, Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford, 1892
Walter Richard Sickert, Minnie Cunningham, c. 1892
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John Singer Sargent (American, worked in UK, 1856-1925) • The Acheson Sisters (Ladies Alexandra, Mary and Theo Acheson) • 1902 • Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England
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Je pense qu'il m'aime et je l'aime. Je ne peux rien faire sans son regard, pour ou contre. J'ai besoin de son regard, j'ai besoin de sa force, même si ça m'inspire d'aller contre sa volonté. Il doit être là, toujours là, il garde mes grands pieds sur terre et parfois il m'aide à m'envoler.
Jane Birkin on Serg Gainsbourg
Jane Birkin will always be France’s favourite “petite Anglaise”, but few will have even guessed at the depth of the insecurity suffered by the “little English girl”. The British-born actress and singer captured Gallic hearts when, aged 21 and the epitome of London’s Sixties cool, she took up with singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg – 20 years her senior and the bad boy of French popular music. The public was fascinated by his excesses and his outrageous behaviour – he once burned a 500 franc note live on television to protest at his tax bill and had made a reggae version of La Marseillaise – and by her Sixties style and heavily accented French.
Their turbulent relationship hit the headlines many times during a 13-year affair which saw the release of their controversial duet ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ (I love you…me neither), which Gainsbourg originally wrote for Brigitte Bardot, a record condemned by the pope and banned by radio stations in the UK for being sexually explicit.
The decades passed, the couple split, Gainsbourg’s drinking and smoking caught up with him, and he died, but in her adopted homeland Birkin, now dead, will always be remembered as his muse but also as a muse and style icon in her own right.
RIP Jane Birkin (1946-2023)
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John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) • Mrs. Abbott Lawrence Rotch • 1903 • Private collection
Dress Credit: Callot Soeurs (French, active 1895–1937), Evening dress, about 1900, silk, chiffon, and linen lace • Private collection
Viewing both the portrait and the photograph of the dress offers a distinct occasion to consider the artist, the subject, the dynamics of portraiture, and the culture of the time period during which both portrait and garment were produced. Now on view, the elegant blue and white evening dress designed by the Parisian couturier Callot Soeurs at the turn of the twentieth century and worn by Mrs. Abbott Lawrence Rotch for her portrait by John Singer Sargent. The premier international portraitist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sargent flourished as a painter to the English upper class.
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