Portrait of Mademoiselle Carlier, 1910

Photo Credit: Musee d'Orsay Collection

La Dame au Turban ("The Lady in the Turban") c. 1910   Pastel on paper.

Colors and contrast altered in Photoshop.

References:

McIntosh, Burr William. Burr McIntosh Monthly, 1907 is available free through Google Books. It is a collection of photographic portraits of the beautiful young women of the theatre in London and Paris during the 1906-1907 season.  The magazine's cover was designed by Alphonse Mucha, and the magazine contains a very brief entry that identifies "Mlle. Carlier" in the portrait above, as an actress.  "Mlle Carlier of the Theatre des Bouffes is well known to all Parisian followers of the Drama."

Wikipedia contains no listing for her, but it tells us the following: "The Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens is a Parisian theatre which was founded in 1855 by the composer Jacques Offenbach for the performance of opéra bouffe and operetta. The current theatre is located in the 2nd arrondissement at 4 rue Monsigny with an entrance at the back at 65 Passage Choiseul. In the 19th century the theatre was often referred to as the Salle Choiseul. With the decline in popularity of operetta after 1870, the theatre expanded its repertory to include comedies.^"

The Carlier family of Paris is an ancient and well-respected family of the nobility that traces its lineage back to the Crusades.  The women of the family have been renowned for their beauty.  See for example:

Michaud, Joseph Fr. and Louis Gabriel Michaud. Biographie Universelle, Ancien et Moderne p. 119
TIQUET,  Marie-Angelique Carlier.  "Born in 1657 at Metz, her father, rich bookseller of that city,  having been lost to death, a considerable fortune was settle upon her brother.  Orphaned at the age of 15, she relied upon the tutelage of an aunt, who felt herself embarrased by this charge and promptly had her married.  Mlle. Carlier, gentle and a rare beauty, joining much spirit with the advantage of a fortune, could have taken her choice of a spouse among the most amiable young people. M. Tiquet, a counsellor of Parliament in Paris, already gaining in age,  took her into his interests and gained the preference . . . . "

During the time of Levy-Dhurmer,  Mlle. Marie Carlier seems to have been a leading light among the French literary movement known as Parnassianism.  This was a literary movement popular in the 1860s and 1870s. It preceded the French Symbolist movement (1880 - 1910) with which Levy-Dhurmer is most closely associated.

In Mlle. Carlier's salon one may have found artists and poets associated with the Parnassians: Théophile Gautier,  Charles Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, Sully Prudhomme, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, François Coppée and José María de Heredia.

Perhaps this same Mlle. Carlier or a younger relative went on to become an admired actress at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in the period from 1900 to 1910.

Certainly a courageous woman called Mlle. Carlier went on to play a real-life role in the French Red Cross during World War I.

See Nadeau, Ludovic.  En Prison sur La Terreur Russe (1920). p. 228  "When, at last, the courageous Mlle. Carlier, of the French Red Cross, obtained permission to transfer this victim to a hospital, she was dying.  I have spoken on other pages of the courageous Mlle Carlier . . . "

Additional References

Carlier, Mlle. "Mouvements Litteraires"
Carlier, Marie-Caroline. "Parnasse et Symbolism: 10 poemes explique" (P. Hatier, 1992)
Carlier, Sylvie. "Redefining European Symbolism c. 1880 - 1910" The Leverhulme Trust

Conrad, Joseph. "An Outpost of Progress" (short story, July 1897, published in Tales of Unrest, 1898) in which one of the characters is named Carlier.

Wikipedia. Parnassianism.

"Parnassianism was a literary style characteristic of certain French poetry during the positivist period of the 19th century, occurring after romanticism and prior to symbolism. The name is derived from the original Parnassian poets' journal, Le Parnasse contemporain, itself named after Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses of Greek mythology. The anthology was first issued during 1866, then again during 1869 and 1876, including poems by Charles Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, Sully Prudhomme, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, François Coppée and José María de Heredia.

"The Parnassians were influenced by Théophile Gautier and his doctrine of "art for art's sake". As a reaction to the less disciplined types of romantic poetry, and what they considered the excessive sentimentality and undue social and political activism of Romantic works, the Parnassians strove for exact and faultless workmanship, selecting exotic and classical subjects which they treated with rigidity of form and emotional detachment. Elements of this detachment were derived from the philosophical work of Arthur Schopenhauer."