Aet. 45, to the American wife of Sir John Leslie, 2nd Baronet (succeeded to the title in 1916) of County Monaghan, Ireland. A skillful amateur musician, she consulted as a subject-matter expert on Evelyn Innes. I have arbitrarily dated this undated letter February 1898.
In Chapter 8 of George Moore’s novel Sister Teresa (1901), the protagonist Sir Owen Asher owned a portrait of his mistress by Édouard Manet.
George Moore himself owned Manet’s Portrait of Mme Manet (Jamot & Wildenstein, 144) and Le Clairon (Jamot & Wildenstein, 516).
He also claimed that his mistress in the 1870s was Comtesse Albazzi (née Kwiatowska), whom he introduced to Manet in his studio; Manet painted a Portrait of Countess Albazzi in 1880 (Rouart & Wildenstein, volume II, no. 35).
Manet purportedly gifted the Albazzi portrait to George, who lost it (and other belongings) when he absconded to London to escape his creditors. Albazzi then acquired the picture and became its first documented owner. George purportedly bought it at her estate sale and gave it to his friend Baron Grimthorpe, the second documented owner.
In George’s Pagan Poems (1881), Albazzi may be the countess in “A Parisian Idyl” and “La Maitresse Maternelle”; she is called by her name in “Chez Moi” and “A Love Letter”; “The Portrait” is a meditation on her picture hanging in the poet’s room.
The picture is also described in Confessions of a Young Man (Chapter 8) and “Apologia pro scriptis meis” in the Fortnightly Review (October 1922).
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