Two Women by Paul Helleu

This watercolor (a medium rarely used by the artist) brilliantly evokes the passion Paul Helleu developed for yachting from 1898 onwards. On a beautiful day in May, he invites us aboard his yacht and introduces us to two elegant female passengers. He captures their portraits with great spontaneity, since, as the inscription at the bottom of the drawing indicates, "the boat stirred too much to work".

1. Paul Helleu

In 1913 Robert de Montesquiou wrote in his book devoted to the painter: "Helleu was born in Vannes in 1859, of a Breton father and a Parisian mother". He hardly knew his father, who died when he was three years old, and was brought up entirely by his mother, who sent him to continue his studies at the Lycée Chaptal in Paris in 1873.

His discovery of Edouard Manet's Chemin de Fer at the 1874 Salon is reported to be at the origin of his artistic vocation. He worked against his mother's wishes in the studio of the painter Gérôme, also frequented by the painters Giovanni Boldini, Jean-Louis Forain and Antonio de La Gandara. Helleu became friends with John Singer Sargent, with whom he shared a studio for some time, as well as with Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) and Jacques Blanche (1861 - 1942), who accompanied him on a trip to England during which he met the painters Whistler and James Tissot.

When his mother cut off his pension to divert him from painting, Helleu worked in the workshop of the ceramist Théodore Beck, where he decorated ornamental ceramic medallions with women’s faces to pay for his studies at the Paris School of Fine Art.

In 1884, the Louis-Guérin household commissioned him to paint a portrait of their daughter Alice, aged 14, which was to appear in the Salon of 1885 . Helleu fell madly in love with his model and wished to marry her. Her parents agreed to the wedding subject to three conditions: that it should only take place when Alice turned 16 (!), that she should finish her studies and that the newlyweds should live with them for two years.

From 1886 onwards, a series of happy events and successes followed: his marriage, followed by the birth of his first daughter Ellen in 1887, the participation in the Pastelists' Salon and the first exhibition of his drypoints in New York in 1889. His friendship with Robert de Montesquiou, whom he met in 1887, opened him the doors of the Parisian aristocracy. In 1891 he painted a series of portraits of Montesquiou’s cousin, the Countess Greffulhe, before meeting Marcel Proust in 1895, also thanks to Montesquiou. Proust took much of his inspiration from Helleu for the character of the painter Elstir in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, a character whose name is said to be a clever alchemy between the names of Helleu and Whistler.

Helleu by then was at the peak of his art and multiplied female portraits, alternating between drypoint, pastels, three-colour pencil drawings whose technique had been inspired by Watteau's, and oil paintings. Commissions for his women’s portraits came from the Parisian High Society as well as from England and the United States, allowing the painter to choose his models.

In parallel to this career as a portrait painter, Helleu produced two large series of paintings concomitantly to Claude Monet's own artistic researches. Since their meeting in 1876, Monet had become a great friend of Helleu (despite an age difference of almost twenty years), and Helleu was one of the two witnesses (the other being the painter Gustave Caillebotte) when Monet, having become a widower, remarried Alice Hoschedé in 1892.

Helleu’s first series was the Cathedrals series, which he began in 1892. While Monet worked in front of the Rouen Cathedral, scrutinising from a fixed point the play of light on the portal, hour after hour and day after day, Helleu was interested in the representation of the cathedrals’ interiors and in particular in the diffusion of light from the stained-glass panels. In 1894 he began outdoor paintings in the park of Versailles. This series can be related to Monet's Water Lilies.

Thanks to his success, Helleu became a real dandy and devoted himself to his passion for yachting. His taste in interior decoration had a lasting influence, since it was Helleu who came up with the idea of abandoning the dark decorations that were so popular at the end of the nine-tenth century for white painted walls, enlivened by the soft glow of golden wooden frames.

The First World War dealt a fatal blow to the world in which Helleu had been one of the most emblematic portraitists. His activity during and after the war was greatly reduced, while he was unable to reinvent his art to seduce a new public. Helleu died on March 23rd 1927 after having seen those who had counted most in his life pass away: Montesquiou in 1921, Proust in 1922, Sargent in 1925 and finally Monet in 1926.

2. Helleu and yachting

A tragedy befell the Helleu couple in 1898: their second daughter, aged 18 months, was killed in the Bois de Boulogne by two runaway horses. Alice Helleu was inconsolable and sank into depression. Helleu rented his first yacht, the Barbara, to try and entertain her. Yachting soon became a great passion for the painter, who spent the summer months sailing between Deauville and Cowes, attending regattas and entertaining friends and models on board.

As early as 1899, he bought his first boat, Bird, followed by a second one, L'Etoile, in 1900, and finally, in 1908, his third and last one, Brunette. Helleu produced most of his seascapes between 1899 and 1913, and our drawing probably dates from this fertile period.

At the time, yachtsmen's wardrobes were meticulously codified, and their wives and girlfriends were equally elegant: dressed in light, airy fabrics, they sailed wearing hats, parasols and veils of fine muslin to preserve the purity of their complexions.

Several paintings that have recently come up for sale depict Madame Helleu aboard one of their yachts, in an outfit very similar to that of the two women depicted in our watercolor (sixth and 7th photos in the gallery). The lightness of this medium and the ease with which it can be used outdoors suggest that Helleu painted, at least for the most part, this double portrait on their boat. It might be tempting to identify the figure on the left as Helleu's wife (who had red hair).

3. Provenance and framing

Our watercolor comes from the collection of a great American art dealer, Dr. Maury P. Leibovitz (1917 - 1992).

Leaving the US Army in 1946, he began a career as a chartered accountant before joining Occidental Petroleum in 1960, at the time headed by Armand Hammer , where he became a close associate. In 1971, together with Armand Hammer, he bought Knoedler, one of the oldest American galleries and moved to New York. Until his death, he was Vice Chairman and President of Knoedler-Monarco, reorienting the gallery's activity towards the publication of lithographs, in particular those by the artist Leroy Neiman.

To frame this watercolor, we've chosen an elm burl frame, whose chaloupée shape evokes the sumptuous yachts on which Helleu loved to sail.

Main bibliographical references :
Robert de Montesquiou Paul Helleu Peintre et Graveur Paris 1913
Edited by Frédérique de Watrigant Paul-César Helleu Paris 2014