The Composer Claude Debussy by Jacques-Émile Blanche

This painting is not unknown to art lovers. In 1903, a year after its execution, it was exhibited at the triennial Salon des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and at the 13th edition of the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, beneath the dome of the Grand Palais. Four years later, Londoners saw it at the seventh exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers at the New Gallery. In 1910, it was shown in Barcelona. In 1943, the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris paid tribute to Jacques-Émile Blanche, who had died the previous year, when the painting was listed as number 33. In the summer of 1954, the Musée de Dieppe in Normandy was the venue for an exhibition that featured works by Blanche and Walter Sickert, a major figure of the early 20th-century British avant-garde. In 1962, this portrait was…