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Paul César HelleuMadame Helleu Looking at Watteau drawings at the Louvre..c. 1901
c. 1901
About the Item
Madame Helleu Looking at Watteau drawings at the Louvre. (En regardant les Watteau de Louvre). c. 1895. Drypoint printed in 2 colors - black and sepia. 11 3/4 x 15 7/8. Goncourt 3, de Montesquiou LXI, Bibliothèque National Inventaire 48. Printed with light plate tone on Van Gelder Zonen laid paper with large, full margins, signed in red chalk The plate is also known as Les Trois Crayons de Watteau. Helleu places his wife, Alice Guérin, before the elegantly-framed Watteau watercolors. Housed in a gold-lipped silk mat and a 20 x 24 1/2-inch gold leaf frame suggestive of those in the Louvre
Helleu was commissioned in 1884 to paint a portrait of a young woman named Alice Guérin (1870-1933). They fell in love, and married two years later, on 28 July 1886. Throughout their lives together, she was his favourite model. Charming, refined and graceful, she helped introduce them to the aristocratic circles of Paris, where they were popular fixtures. Helleu's favorite model by far was his wife, Alice Guérin, and later Madame Helleu, whom he met when and began sketching when she was only 14. Later, their eldest daughter Ellen would also become a favorite model of his. Both Helleu and his wife became high society figures, and their graceful and elegant lifestyle was echoed in his compositions. Throughout his career, Paul Helleu made many charming, intimate drawings and sketches of his wife and their three children, as well as relatives and family friends. The present sheet is a portrait of the artist’s favourite model, his wife Alice Guérin, whom he married in 1886, when she was sixteen years old. Alice Helleu had striking, long auburn hair, whose abundant tresses she would pin up on occasion. An elegant woman of reserved manners, she was always depicted by her husband dressed in stylish clothes, often wearing hats from the finest Parisian milliners. Alice also occasionally posed for other painters, including Giovanni Boldini and John Singer Sargent; the latter painted a double portrait of Paul and Alice Helleu
- Creator:Paul César Helleu (1859-1927, French)
- Creation Year:c. 1901
- Dimensions:Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 14.5 in (36.83 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Storrs, CT
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU33526169952
Paul César Helleu
Rich impression with dramatic drypoint burr and tone no other artist epitomizes the whole atmosphere of elegance and hedonistic pleasure which pervaded Paris society at the first decade of the century as does Helleu. A close friend of Proust and the inspiration for one of the principal characters in La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Helleu’s whole life style echoed the incomparable elegance and flow of his drawing, the sheer style of his art, and his eye for the poses of the beautiful women who were his friends and his patrons. During the 1870’s, Helleu had come to know the painters of Impressionism and also artists Sargent and Whistler who became his special friends and inspiration. By the early 1880’s, he had already developed the quality of expressive sweeping line, which is the essence of his drawing, but in 1885 he was encouraged by Tissot to try working on prints in drypoint. At this time, Tissot had decided, after the death of his lover and model Kathleen Newton, to travel to the Holy Land on an artistic pilgrimage. Having decided he would no longer engrave, he gave Helleu his diamond stylus…a literal and figurative “passing of the baton”. It was in the incision and texture of drypoint that his art was to reach one of its greatest peaks. He had an innate feel for the balance between a lightly curving stroke and the deeply cut highly tonal burr of the strongest drypoint. Around the turn of the century he started to combine drypoint with multi-inking in colors, the areas of color restricted to such touches as the bows on the hats, the hair color or the red of the lips. The plate was drawn at a single sitting, and then the color inks were brushed onto it. The results are some of the most splendid and decorative of all Belle Époque prints.
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