Lot 177: f - FERNANDO ÁLVAREZ DE SOTOMAYOR EL FERROL 1875-MADRID 1960

PROPERTY FROM A SOUTH AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

RETRATO DE TERESA WILMS MONTT

119 by 109.5cm., 46¾ by 43in.

dated 1908 l.l.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Acquired by the family of the present owner from the artist; thence by descent

NOTE

Sotomayor's model is the independent-spirited Chilean feminist writer and poet Teresa Wilms Montt (Viña del Mar 1893-1921 Paris). Restless by nature, her brief and unhappy marriage lasted until 1916, when she left Santiago for Buenos Aires, leaving her two daughters in the care of her father-in-law. In the Argentinian capital she immersed herself in bohemian artistic circles and published her first elegiac book Inquietudes sentimentales before moving to Spain in 1918. Here she befriended the novelists Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, and the dramatist and novelist Ramón del Valle-Inclán, and became the muse of Sotomayor who quickly fell for her energetic yet enigmatic charm. Teresa became a doyenne of the Madrid literary scene, publishing En la inquietud del mármol with a prologue by Gómez-Carillo, and Anuarí prefaced by Valle-Inclán. She was briefly re-united with her daughters in Paris in the early 1920s where she died in her prime after a brief illness.

The authenticity of the work has been confirmed by Sotomayor's son in a certificate dated 28 August 2005.

Fig. 1, Photograph of Teresa Wilms Montt, the sitter in the present work