On Bluesky, Michael Lobel keeps ringing the dog painting bell, and I keep salivating. Friday morning he posted this photo of Gertrude Stein sitting with her and Alice B. Toklas’ dog, holding a portrait of the dog by Marie Laurencin. Stein and Toklas had three dogs in succession, all named Basket. This was Basket II.
The painting is in the Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas Papers collection at the Beinecke Library, and has not, as yet, been transferred to the Yale Art Gallery. [next day update: I was wrong. The painting is indeed on permanent loan to the Gallery. Who nevertheless does not show it in their collection.]
There is no date. Laurencin came into Stein’s orbit as early as 1908-1910, during her (Laurencin’s obv) affairs with Apollinaire and Nicole Groult. Basket I makes many appearances in the second and fourth albums of Stein’s photographs in the Beinecke, the mid- to late 1930s. Basket II appears in Vol. 4. Oh, the photo above is from Vol. 5, which dates from 1940-1945, and includes soldiers’ photos of a burned out Berchtesgaden. So this presumably follows Laurencin’s rehabilitation after her affairs with the Nazis during the occupation. The verso of the photo has a label, “From tHe CollECtioN Of CaRl VAN VecHten.”
[Next day update: from the published letters between Stein & Van Vechten, the portrait was painted in 1946, before March. Stein sent Van Vechten a photo; was it this one? The photo is well-published, if thinly discussed.]
There is also in the collection a one-page object from 1950 titled, Hommage à Basket : an impression, by Surrealist instigator Lise Deharme, which includes a portrait by Laurencin. Posthumous to Stein, of course, but perhaps relevant.