L’élégante Toto from Laure Hayman

Rare bronze of an elegant woman.
Foundry Siot Paris Laure Hayman (1851-1932) was a famous demi-mondaine of the Belle Epoque.
An Englishwoman born in Chile, she was a descendant of painter Francis Hayman, the master of Thomas Gainsborough.
Her lovers included the Duc d'Orléans, Charles de La Rochefoucauld Duc d'Estrées, the King of Greece, Charles-Egon IV of Fürstenberg, Louis Weil - Marcel Proust's maternal great-uncle, Prince Alexis Karageorgevitch, pretender to the Serbian throne, and Adrien Proust, Marcel's father.
She lived off the generosity of financier Raphaël Bischoffsheim, and was nicknamed the "duke's denier".
Laure Hayman is the main model for the character of Odette de Crécy in La Recherche, Swann's great love, and lives like her at 4, rue Lapérouse. She is also nicknamed "la dame en rose".
Her life as a demi-mondaine is retraced in the Swann exhibition through photos of her lovers, including four portraits of Prince Karageorgevitch - the only one, it is said, she really loved - letters and manuscripts.
There is also copy no. 1 on Japon of Paul Bourget's book Pastels. Dix portraits de femmes (1889), which includes the short story about her that she gave to Marcel Proust,