Nude models in the studio , dated 192 - Jacques Emile BLANCHE (1861-1942 )

Very rare and exceptional canvas

signed and dated upper left, 1926
dedicated to Armand Pierhal
catalog raisonné reference RM1520

A contemporary and friend of Marcel Proust, Jacques Emile Blanche is one of the best-known portrait painters of the Belle Epoque.
Between tradition and modernity, there's something of Manet and Whistler in the artist's work.
Jacques Emile Blanche grew up in a refined, bourgeois environment.

The grandson and son of a psychiatrist, he studied with Stéphane Mallarmé and Henri Bergson and André Gide.
He studied painting under Henri Gervex, then went his own way, drawing inspiration from the masters of his time.

Thanks to his social background, his friends and the protection of the eccentric and worldly Comte de Montesquiou, Jacques Emile became the official portraitist of high society, artists and writers.

In 1912, Blanche took part in the Venice Biennale.
He was given an entire room for this major international exhibition.
In 1921, he donated some of his works to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, which devoted a room to him.
He also exhibited in Paris, London and Brussels.
In France, he received the distinction of Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur, and in Belgium, he was named Officier L'Ordre de Léopold.

Apart from a few very classical nudes around 1900, the artist painted only two more in his career.
The first in 1920, a portrait of the English actress Maud May,
and the present one.
Painted in 1926, it is dedicated to Armand Pierhal.
A novelist, journalist and art critic, he wrote the preface to an exhibition catalog devoted to Jacques Emile Blanche by Galerie Charpentier.
Phierhal and Blanche were very close. In 1938, the artist painted a portrait of the writer

Although Jacques Emile Blanche is the painter of the French intelligentsia, some of his models remain anonymous, as in our work.
But this doesn't matter, because the artist is also a painter of the soul, and his portraits penetrate the deepest and most intimate aspects of his models.
For this singular nude portrait, he offers viewers two paintings.
In the foreground, a young woman poses, offering her body to our dazzled eyes,
highlighted by a warm light.
At her side, slightly set back, another woman, of whom only part of the body is visible.
But let's stop for a moment, get closer, focus on the details...

Is this really a classical portrait?
No, the artist offers us an instantaneous, vivid view of a private, secret moment in her studio, a world to which we rarely have access.

Observe the delicate movement of her hands as she reattaches her hair.
Appreciate the suggested movement of the second model.
The artist's subtle staging and choice of bold, luminous and colorful colors create "an entre-soi.
When we look at this canvas, it's just us, them
and our imagination.