PAUL-CÉSAR HELLEU 1859 Vannes - Paris 1927

LE CLAIRE KUNST SEIT 1982

Portrait d’Alice Helleu, la femme de l’artiste

Black, red and white chalks on cream Japanese paper. Signed in the lower left margin: Helleu. 615 x 745 mm

PROVENANCE: Private collection, France (acquired by the grandparents of the former owner in the early twentieth century, probably from the artist himself, or from his daughter Paulette)

Paul-César Helleu moved to Paris in 1876. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, training in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme. His circle of friends included James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Alfred Stevens, Edgar Degas, Giovanni Boldini, Claude Monet and the writer Edmond de Goncourt. He was also a friend of Marcel Proust, who was to base the character of the painter Elstir in À la recherche du temps perdu on him.

Helleu established his reputation at the Salons of 1885 and 1886 where he exhibited several large pastels. In the following year, he came into contact with Robert de Montesquiou, who was to be his chief patron and who introduced him to the Parisian haut monde. A gifted portraitist, Helleu enjoyed considerable success throughout his career with his portraits of the elegant women of fashionable society. His works were greatly admired by his contemporaries and he received a large number of portrait commissions. He was a regular visitor to England and in 1902 began travelling to the United States. In 1912, on his second visit, he was commissioned to decorate the ceiling of the main concourse of New York’s Grand Central Station with an astronomical design of zodiac constellations. His artistic reputation is based on his output of drawings and prints – he produced over two thousand drypoints. They were in great demand in their time.

The present sheet is a portrait of Paul Helleu’s favorite model, his wife Alice Guérin. They married in 1886 when she was sixteen. A woman of great beauty, Alice was the embodiment of Helleu’s penchant for elegant women. In February 1895, Edmond de Goncourt notes in a letter to Helleu: Your work has for its inspiration that dear model who fills all your compositions with her delicate elegance. It is something of a monograph on Woman, in all the infinitely varied postures of intimate home life. We see her with her head resting idly on the back of an armchair; […] or seated, in reverie […], or reading, as one lock of hair strays down her cheek, her turnedup nose assuming a questioning air as, lips slightly parted, she contentedly interprets what she is reading; or sleeping, her head sunk into the pillow, the line of her shoulders barely drawn, ‘profil perdu’ except for a glimpse of her pretty little nose, and her eye closed beneath its dark curved lashes.1

In the course of his career, Helleu made a large number of intimate and attractive drawings of his wife and their three children. They were often executed in a distinctive trios crayon technique. In the present sheet he depicts his wife in the salon of their apartment in relaxed pose on a Louis XV-style settee [fig. 1]. She is stylishly dressed and wears a large hat decorated with ostrich feathers. Her chin is

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pensively resting on her hand. The drawing has the quality of a finished work in its own right despite the panache of the draughtsmanship with its rapid articulation, vigorous hatching and abbreviated delineation of the settee. A number of large-format, stylistically comparable trois crayons drawings of Alice Helleu are held in private collections [fig. 2].2

J. M. Quennell writes in his essay on the re-evaluation of Helleu’s oeuvre: Many of Helleu’s best and most delightful productions are his portraits of his wife […].These quick impressions, drawings or drypoints, are extraordinarily effective and have a much subtler appeal than the long series of commissioned portraits of fashionable ladies and celebrated beauties that helped bring him fame and fortune.3

The Association des Amis de Paul-César Helleu has confirmed the authenticity of the drawing. It will be included in the forthcoming monograph on Helleu.

Fig. 1: Dornac (pseudonym of Paul Cardon), Paul Helleu in his Salon, photograph (showing the Rococo-style settee at the left)

Fig. 2: Madame Helleu blottie dans un canapé, black, red and white chalk; c. 700 x 890 mm. Private collection

1 Cited after Paul-César Helleu, Glimpses of the Grace of Women: an exhibition of drypoints, Knoedler Gallery, New York 1974, unpaginated. 2 For illustrations of a number of examples, see Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin and Marie-Lucie Imhoff, Paul Helleu 1859- 1927, exhib. cat., Musée Eugène Boudin, Honfleur 1993, notably pp. 84-89, nos. 57, 53, 55 (fig. 2 of the present catalogue), 67, 58, and 60. 3 J. M. Quennell, Paul Helleu: A Revaluation, in Apollo, March 1983, p. 116.