Jacqueline Delubac (1907-1997) was the third wife of Sacha Guitry
Gaby Morlay and Jacqueline Delubac with her bag, a novelty from Hermès in 1936.
Jacqueline Delubac and Sacha Guitry
Jacqueline Delubac is a French actress. I want to dance, to have fun with people my own age," she declared before parting with the illustrious 50-year-old.
Jacqueline Delubac
The young woman is ingenious, and determined. Her assets, combined with her beauty, ensure her a future free of gloom.
Jacqueline Delubac is a French actress. She was born on 27 May 1907 in Lyon into a bourgeois family and moved to Paris in 1927. She took dance and singing lessons and quickly obtained roles in revues, theatre and cinema. Introduced to Sacha Guitry by one of his friends, Jacques Trébor, SG offered her a role in "Villa à vendre" (1931). She accepted. They fell in love. They married on 21 February 1935 and went through a divorce in 1939. "I can no longer live centred on this theatre life. I have too many curiosities, too many desires. I want to dance, to have fun with companions of my own age", she declared before separating from the illustrious fifty-year-old.
Clutch bag Hermès 24 FG ST HONORE crocodile porosus - silver clasp, cira 1930, having belonged to Jacqueline Delubac
Jacqueline Delubac - Years 1930
Press clipping
1977
Egeria of French good taste
She played in 23 of Sacha Guitry's plays and acted in 11 of his films. After her divorce, she hardly acted in more than ten films to devote herself to her modern art collections, having made the voluntary and audacious choice to move on. At the time, she was one of the most attractive French women. Her wardrobe, made up of pieces from the great couturiers, was in exquisite taste; she wore shoes from Vivier, Perugia and other great boot makers, bought her trunks and wardrobe from Louis Vuitton and her bags, gloves and accessories from Hermès.
Paris Match,nN° 36 du 26 novembre 1949 - La Mode de Jacqueline Delubac à New York"
In 1949, Paris Match magazine voted her "the best dressed woman in Paris".
The magazine knows a lot! Always present behind the lens at social evenings, openings and exhibitions, the flashes of the magazine's photographers crackled as she passed.
She made the headlines in Paris.
Her elegance and distinction were to be the order of the day until her accidental death in 1997.
Death at the Faubourg
As she was leaving the Hermès boutique in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, a cyclist hit her head on the road. She was 90 years old at the time.
After Guitry
From the 1940s onwards, more keen than ever on modern art, she acquired paintings in this vein. Her first acquisition was a Dufy "L'Atelier aux raisins" in 1942. Modigliani, Picasso, Dubuffet, Rouault, Fautrier, Bacon... joined her collection, making her home more than a museum, a "sanctuary". The pieces in her collection would prove to be masterpieces.
Georges Braque (1882-1963), "Woman at the easel", 1936. Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 92.5 cm. Jacqueline Delubac legacy, 1997. Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Fragment of Claude Monet's "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" when he was in Jacqueline Delubac's Quai d'Orsay flat.
At the same time, she became the companion of a wealthy diamond dealer of Armenian origin, Mihran Eknayan. They married in Neuilly in 1981. Eknayan was also an art lover and had a large collection of Impressionist paintings. He died in 1985. She inherited his fortune and his collection of paintings and gave an important piece of her late husband's collection to the French State: a major fragment of Claude Monet's painting "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe". At the same time she moved into a large flat on the Quai d'Orsay.
Succession
In 1993, Jacqueline Delubac bequeathed most of the works in the Delubac-Eknayan collection, 35 paintings, to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, her home town.
As for her personal collection of clothes, from the 1960s to the 1990s, more than 600 pieces, it went to the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris.
Three Hermès bags that belonged to him were sold at an auction at the Metz auction house in April 2021.
Jacqueline Delubac
shortly before her death
The exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon 7 November 2014 - 16 February 2015 - Jacqueline Delubac "the choice of modernity"
The exhibition paid tribute to Madame Jacqueline Delubac.
For this occasion, the Musée d'Orsay lent the famous fragment of Claude Monet's emblematic work, "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe".
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