Rachel (1887 British Edition)/Note on Portraits
Many portraits of Rachel were attempted by contemporary artists. Horace Vernet, struck by the Oriental picturesqueness of the type, attempted to perpetuate it; but she only consented to sit once to him, so that in finishing the likeness he lost the individuality and made it a replica of the innumerable Rebeccas and Esthers in his studio. Geffroy introduced her into both his celebrated pictures, representing the Comédie Française in 1840 and in 1852. "I would like you," she writes to a friend, "to see the portrait that my colleague Geffroy has done of your tragédienne in her ermine robes as La Czarina." The portrait will last longer than the play, than the woman, or than the memory of either. A sketch of Rachel, after death, made by Madame O'Connell, was given by Sarah Félix to Émile de Girardin, who in turn gave it to Sarah Bernhardt. The best portrait, however, that was done of her is by Müller, now belonging to her son Alexander Walewski. The whole history of the woman is written in the deep sadness of the eyes, the waxen pallor of the brow and cheeks, which seem worn with the passions and exertions that every night tore the fragile body to pieces, while the tender softness of the expression round the mouth bespeak the mother who wrote: "Come into my heart, dear little one, and find there all the tenderness of which there is an unlimited supply for my sons. It is riches without end that God gives mothers who love their children."