Marie LAURENCIN
French
1883-1956

Jeune fille à la rose

Signed and numbered limited edition colour lithograph No. 87/250 after her 1930 watercolour painting.
18 1/2 x 211/4” inc letters. Attractive carved faux wood frame 25 1/2 x 28 3/4”
Ref.GM1 (191)/DNN/dd.anan>LRL     PRICE CODE C  SOLD

This fine image which is signed and numbered below the image depicting a wraith-like young girl wearing a pink/green diamond patterned (harlequin) dress, with pink beaded headdress on her blond hair. She holds a pink rose in her left hand. The work is typical of the soft palette of ethereal female figures which was influenced whilst a member of the circle of Picasso.

Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-guard as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d’Or. She became romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and has often been identified as his muse, also the lesbian writer Natalie Barney. During WW1 she and her husband Baron Otto von Waëtjen were exiled in Spain and subsequently Düsseldorf but her heart remained in the artistic community of Paris to which she returned following her divorce. Her work reached a wide audience when she designed the set and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Les Biches. In 1937, seen as the height of her career, a retrospective of Laurencin's work was held in conjunction with the Great Exhibition of Independent Art Masters at the Petit Palais. Laurencin continued to explore themes of femininity and what she considered to be feminine modes of representation until her death.