The Overlooked Surrealist Stylings of Marie-Laure de Noailles
VAULT continues our exploration of the lasting legacy of Surrealism, looking to the little-known art practice of one of the movement’s most influential patrons.
Image credit: Installation view, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation, villa Noailles, Hyères, 27 June, 2024 – 12 January, 2025. Courtesy and © CHANEL
The name Marie-Laure de Noailles instantly conjures the vision of an elegant philanthropist, patron of the arts, model, socialite and writer – perhaps also a solarised photograph by Man Ray or a contemplative painting by Balthus, immortalising her chic raven bob and soulful eyes. A circle of artists and intellectuals, Surrealists in particular, radiated out from Marie-Laure and her husband, the Viscomte Charles de Noailles, whose financial support and friendship are defining factors in the existence of many of the most iconic artworks of the early twentieth century that we have the fortune of enjoying today (the Viscomte funded Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s L’age d’or as a birthday present to his born-on-Halloween wife!)
Image credit: Installation view, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation, villa Noailles, Hyères, 27 June, 2024 – 12 January, 2025. Courtesy and © CHANEL
But an exhibition staged at the villa Noailles — once the modernist summer home enjoyed by the couple and their friends upon the ruins of the medieval castle of Hyères, and now a dynamic private arts centre — makes the case for the addition of ‘bonafide artist’ to Marie-Laure’s already impressive resume (while she was recognised in her time and well-exhibited, her practice continues to be eclipsed in the collective consciousness by her other work). Gathering together 58 of her paintings from amongst the Noailles’ remarkable art collection in celebration of the Surrealist Manifesto’s centenary, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre opened in March of 2024 and was enhanced at the end of June with Conversation. The addition, supported by CHANEL, also the major partner of the concurrent International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories held there annually, augments the original exhibition with works by 42 artists, including Dora Maar, Jean Cocteau, Oscar Dominguez, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning and César – many of whom belonged to her entourage.
Image credit: Installation view, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation, villa Noailles, Hyères, 27 June, 2024 – 12 January, 2025. Courtesy and © CHANEL
The additional works illuminate Marie-Laure’s influences and the affinities between her paintings and those of the other Surrealists. For her part, she painted on an eighteenth-century easel while sitting on a Louis XV fauteuil, an appropriately whimsical setup for a woman whose matrilineal ancestry counted muses of Petrarch and Proust, Crusades-era medieval nobility and the Marquis de Sade. Her expressive oils on canvas are Dali-esque in their dreamily washy surfaces. They possess Fini's expansive yet refined palette and enjoy a likeness to Dominguez’s abstracted shapes while remaining triumphantly individual. An Australian observer might see a touch of James Gleeson, even. A lifelong student in the sense that she was always learning from her counterparts and translating those lessons into her art, she was particularly taken with the Surrealist-favoured technique of decalcomania (invented by her close friend Dominguez, alongside whom she established a studio and resided for several months a year at the Clos Saint-Bernard in Hyères.)
Image credit: Installation view, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation, villa Noailles, Hyères, 27 June, 2024 – 12 January, 2025. Courtesy and © CHANEL
While Marie-Laure’s painting practice is treated rightfully as the cynosure of the exhibition, it’s worthwhile to note her oeuvre also included lithographs, etchings, ballet set designs, painted plates and even sculpture. Held in private collections and those of the National Fund for Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Marie-Laure’s pictorial works, like her literary works, were often charmingly signed with a stylised leaf. She painted until the end of her life in January 1970, less than a month before a scheduled solo exhibition was set to open, and until that point also remained committed to avant-garde movements.
Image credit: Installation view, Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation, villa Noailles, Hyères, 27 June, 2024 – 12 January, 2025. Courtesy and © CHANEL
39th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories – Hyères took place from October 10 to 13, 2024.
Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peintre, Conversation continues until January 12, 2025, at villa Noailles, Hyères, France.