Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL (1881-1949) - Lot 23

Lot n° 23
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3000 - 5000 EUR
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Result : 5 120EUR
Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL (1881-1949) - Lot 23
Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL (1881-1949) Leaving the theater, ca. 1914 Watercolor and India ink on Whatman board Signed lower left Sheet size: 26.8 x 36 cm Subject: 21.9 x 29 cm With frame: 32.5 x 39.5 cm Capturing the joyous elegance of a theater outing on opening night, this watercolor shows a Delaunay Belleville 18 HP, 4-cylinder chassis, type 1913 - 1914, parked in front of the Théâtre des Variétés, whose neo-classical façade Bernard Boutet de Monvel particularly appreciated. In 1905, the painter's brother, memorialist Roger Boutet de Monvel, had recounted the history of this theater under the Second Empire in a book entitled "Les Variétés 1850 - 1870", for which Bernard Boutet de Monvel had illustrated the cover. In fact, it is this brother, an inveterate dandy whose worldly snobbery Bernard Boutet de Monvel liked to affectionately joke about, that the artist depicts three-quarter-facing, in the center of the composition, with a white carnation in his buttonhole and an huit-reflets screwed onto his head. On the far right of the composition, Bernard Boutet de Monvel takes up a silhouette well known to his contemporaries for having been, almost identically, the subject of a plate published in March 1913 in the Gazette du Bon Ton and entitled "La cape noire" ("The black cape"). Beautifully fresh colors. At the end of 1913, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, painter and illustrator of elegance, "sportmen and dandies" - along with his brother Roger, the artist was one of the founding members of the Gazette du Bon Ton - was commissioned by Delaunay Belleville, a manufacturer of luxury automobile chassis, to produce four major watercolor advertisements to illustrate their 1914 catalog. These four watercolors, reproduced by Draeger and accompanied by a text by Roger Boutet de Monvel, were intended, through the modernity of their line and the clarity of their composition, to convey all the majesty and chic of automobiles prized by King Edward VII, Tsar Nicholas II and President Roosevelt alike. We would like to thank Mr. Stéphane-Jacques Addade, President of the European Chamber of Art Experts and expert in the work of Bernard Boutet de Monvel, for confirming the authenticity of this work.
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