Sonia de Klamery (echada) (Sonia de Klamery [Lying])

Late-nineteenth-century Symbolism coined the term femme fatale to describe a type of woman with an uninhibited sexuality who became an archetype for many artists around the turn of the century. Personages such as Salomé, Lilith or Cleopatra, in addition to mythological creatures, sphinxes, harpies and sirens, were some of the models — not without misogyny — associated with the contemporary woman at a time in which social changes made possible the conquering of new spaces.

Hermen Anglada Camarasa had settled in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, a time in which his personal style began to take shape in a synthesis of Symbolism and Post-Impressionism. For his portrait of Sonia de Klamery, the wife of the Count of Pradère, a Spanish diplomat, Camarasa would draw from this archetype of the femme fatale and the exotic and decadent imagery inspired by the Ballets Russes, which had revolutionised fashion and the visual arts since premiering in Paris in 1909. The woman rendered, who had already posed for the artist in a portrait with mantilla, chose this model to project an image of herself that was modern, sensual and emancipated, chiming with the new times.



Raúl Martínez Arranz