Madeleine Zillhardt

She was the sister of painter Jenny Zillhardt.

Madeleine Zillhardt studied at Académie Julian. Training under Tony Robert-Fleury is recorded. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is painting. Works named in the authority record are Bravo Tigre, Mr Edgar Degas, Louise Catherine Breslau and friends, Fluctuat nec mergitur (Madeleine Zillhardt, 1918) and La Marne (Madeleine Zillhardt). Work by Madeleine Zillhardt is recorded in the collections of Musée de l'Air and La contemporaine.

• Born — 10 June 1863 • Birthplace — Saint-Quentin, Hauts-de-France, France • Died — 16 April 1950 • Place of death — Neuilly-sur-Seine, Ile-de-France, France • Spouse — Louise Catherine Breslau • Known for — Writing, painting • Memorials — place Louise Catherine Breslau & Madeleine Zillhardt, Paris, 6th arrondissement • Illustration — Drawing for 'La Vie Pensive' with Madeleine Zillhardt by Louise Catherine Breslau

• Illustration — Madeleine Zillhardt by Louise Catherine Breslau. La Toilette (1898). Madeleine Zillhardt was born in Saint-Quentin, France. She studied at the Académie Julian, art school in Paris; at the time the only institution of art education open to women in Paris. Her sister Jenny Zillhardt also studied there. She met there young artists like her: Anna Klumpke, Hermine David, Agnes Goodsir, Sarah Purser, Marie Bashkirtseff, and especially her "rival", Louise Catherine Breslau. In 1884, Zillhardt asked Breslau to make her portrait. They would not leave each other and moved permanently together in 1886. In 1887, Breslau performed 'Contre Jour', one of her masterpieces, representing the couple she formed with Zillhardt in their intimacy. The painting was bought by the Swiss government in 1896, and is today held by the Museum of Fine Arts Bern. In 1908, Breslau painted 'La Vie pensive', another work of the couple, now displayed at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne. Zillhardt became one of the most original decorators of her time and Louise Breslau had a huge success in the world of painting. The two women become an essential couple in the Parisian art scene and receive their artist friends: Henri Fantin-Latour, Auguste Rodin, and Edgar Degas, of whom Zillhardt wrote a biography. During the First World War, Madeleine Zillhardt distinguished herself in the decorative arts for her "patriotic faience", in support to Clemenceau or denouncing the bombing of civilians, like Fluctuat nec mergitur, Paris bombed, executed in 1918, now part of the collections of the French national Museum of Air and Space. She also went back to painting with Breslau. They painted portraits of soldiers, nurses and doctors on the way to the front to give to their families before they left. After the war, the health of Breslau declined until her death on May 12, 1927 in Paris. Zillhardt spent the rest of her life perpetuating the work of her companion, donating to various museums. Zillhardt allowed the work of her partner to be dispersed and to appear today in international collections. Zillhardt died in 1950 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

In 1928, Zillhardt bought the concrete barge 'Liège' in Paris in order to make it available to the Salvation Army. With the support of Winnaretta Singer, princesse de Polignac and heiress of the company of sewing machines Singer, the barge was rehabilitated by Le Corbusier in 1929, with his student, Japonese architect Kunio Maekawa. According to the will of Madeleine Zillhardt, the boat took the name Louise-Catherine in tribute to Breslau and became a refuge for the homeless in winter and a summer camp for children, moored in Paris on the banks of the Seine, at the Pont des Arts and at the Pont d'Austerlitz. In 2006, the boat was taken over the Fondation Le Corbusier. In 2018, it accidentally sank on February 10, during the flood of the Seine in Paris. The Louise-Catherine barge is still located at the Port of Austerlitz, in the 13th arrondissement, hoping for a renovation project.