Anne de Noailles
Encyclopedia
Biography
Born Princess Anna Elisabeth Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, she was a descendant of the Bibescu and Craioveşti
Craiovesti
The Craiovești , later Brâncovenești , were a boyar family in Wallachia who gave the country several of its Princes and held the title of Ban of Oltenia for ca...
families of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n boyars. Her father was Prince Grégoire Bibesco-Bassaraba, a son of Wallachian Prince Gheorghe Bibesco de Brancovan
Gheorghe Bibescu
Gheorghe Bibescu was a hospodar of Wallachia between 1843 and 1848. His rule coincided with the revolutionary tide that culminated in the 1848 Wallachian revolution.-Early political career:...
and Zoe Brâncoveanu. Her Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
mother was the former Ralouka (Rachel) Musuru, a well known musician, to whom the Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
composer Ignacy Paderewski dedicated several of his compositions.
In 1897 she married Mathieu Fernand Frédéric Pascal, de Noailles (1873–1942), the fourth son of the 7th Duke de Noailles. The couple soon became the toast of Parisian high society. They had one child, a son, Count Anne-Jules de Noailles (1900–1979).
Anna de Noailles wrote three novels, an autobiography, and many collections of poetry. She had friendly relations with the intellectual, literary and artistic elite of the day including Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes was a French poet. Coming from an ancient family, he spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism and for singing the pleasures of a humble country life...
, Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral
Frédéric Mistral was a French writer and lexicographer of the Occitan language. Mistral won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904 and was a founding member of Félibrige and a member of l'Académie de Marseille...
, Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac
Robert de Montesquiou
Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac , was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy....
, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Pierre Loti
Pierre Loti
Pierre Loti was a French novelist and naval officer.-Biography:Loti's education began in his birthplace, Rochefort, Charente-Maritime. At the age of seventeen he entered the naval school in Brest and studied at Le Borda. He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906...
, Paul Hervieu
Paul Hervieu
Paul Hervieu, full name Paul-Ernest Hervieu , French dramatist and novelist, was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine.-Biography:...
, and Max Jacob
Max Jacob
Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.-Life and career:After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career...
.
So popular was Anna de Noailles that various notable artists of the day painted her portrait, including Antonio de la Gandara
Antonio de La Gandara
Antonio de la Gándara was a French painter, pastellist and draughtsman.-Biography:He was born in Paris, France, but his father was of Spanish ancestry, born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and his mother was from England. La Gandara's talent was strongly influenced by both cultures...
, Kees van Dongen
Kees van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria van Dongen , usually known as Kees van Dongen or just Van Dongen, was a Dutch painter and one of the Fauves. He gained a reputation for his sensuous, at times garish, portraits....
, Jacques Émile Blanche
Jacques Émile Blanche
Jacques-Émile Blanche was a French painter born in Paris. His father was a successful psychiatrist who ran a fashionable clinic, and Blanche was brought up in the rich Parisian neighborhood of Passy in a house that had belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe.Although he received some instruction in...
, and the British
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
portrait painter Philip de Laszlo
Philip Alexius de Laszlo
Philip Alexius de László, MVO was a Hungarian painter known particularly for his portraits of royal and aristocratic personages.-Early life:...
. In 1906 her image was sculpted by Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
; the clay model can be seen today in the Musée Rodin
Musée Rodin
The Musée Rodin in Paris, France, is a museum that was opened in 1919 in the Hôtel Biron and surrounding grounds. It displays works by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin....
in Paris, and the finished marble bust is on display in New York's Metropolitan Museum.
Anna de Noailles was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor, the first woman to be received in the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, and she was honored with the "Grand Prix" of the Académie Française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
in 1921.
Countess de Noailles served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal
Florence Meyer Blumenthal
Florence Meyer Blumenthal was a philanthropist who founded the Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal , which awarded the Prix Blumenthal from 1919-1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians — to promote Franco- American relations.For their altruism,...
in awarding the Prix Blumenthal
Prix Blumenthal
The Prix Blumenthal was a grant or stipend awarded through the philanthropy of Florence Meyer Blumenthal — and the foundation she created, Fondation franco-américaine Florence Blumenthal — to discover young French artists, aid them financially, and in the process draw the United States...
, a grant given between 1919-1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.
She died in 1933 aged 56 and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
in Paris. She was a cousin by marriage of Prince Antoine Bibesco
Antoine Bibesco
Antoine, Prince Bibesco was a Romanian aristocrat, lawyer, diplomat and writer.- Biography :His father was Prince Alexandre Bibesco, the last surviving son of the Hospodar of Wallachia. His mother was Helene Epourano, daughter of a former Prime Minister of Romania...
and Princess Marthe Bibesco
Marthe Bibesco
Marthe, Princess Bibesco was a Romanian-French writer of the Belle Époque...
.
Writings
- Le Cœur innombrable (1901)
- L'Ombre des jours (1902)
- La Nouvelle Espérance (1903)
- Le Visage émerveillé (1904)
- La Domination (1905)
- Les Éblouissements (1907)
- Les Vivants et les Morts (1913)
- Les Forces éternelles (1920)
- Les Innocentes, ou La Sagesse des femmes (1923)
- Poème de l'amour (1924)
- L'Honneur de souffrir (1927)
- Exactitudes, Paris (1930)
- Le Livre de ma vie" (1932)
- Derniers Vers et Poèmes d'enfance (1934)
External links
- Website on Anna de Noailles, in both English and French
- Anna de Noailles' Blog, in English
- A Swiss blog on Anna de Noailles, in French
- The Anna de Noailles Circle in France
- Catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France from which it is now possible to download Anna de Noailles' works for free
- Poems by Anna de Noailles
- The Anna de Noailles french school in Bucharest, Romania