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Lot description
Edouard-Marie-Guillaume Dubufe (French, 1853-1909) Portrait of Mrs Harry Vane Milbank, née Alice Sidonie Van den Bergh signed and dated 'Edouard Dubufe 1874' (lower left) oil on canvas, unframed 218 x 133cm (85 13/16 x 52 3/8in). Provenance: From the sitter to her son, Albert de Belleroche (French 1864-1944). Thence by descent to the present owner. The present lot portrays Alice Sidonie Van den Berg, daughter of Desire Baruch of Brussels, and a prominent socialite in London and Paris. Alice hosted great parties in both cities and was a good friend of both the Impératrice Eugénie, Napoleon 3rd's wife, in Paris and the Marquess of Queensberry in London. Described as having an 'almost legendary beauty', Alice's first marriage, to Edmund Charles, Marquis de Belleroche produced a son Albert, who went on to become a celebrated painter. But the marriage ended unhappily, and in 1871, Alice married Harry Vane Milbank, the nephew and heir-to-be of the Duke of Cleveland and a celebrated duellist, huntsman and adventurer; he was also an inveterate gambler. The family moved to Paris, where many great writers and artists were frequent visitors to Alice's salons, notably the writer and humourist Oscar Wilde and the great American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).