Paul César Helleu Lithograph Belle Epoque Ball Scene Around 1900

Paul César Helleu is an artist from Morbihan, widely recognized during his lifetime for his representations of landscapes and female portraits. Trained at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, he met a number of major artists from the Parisian scene at the end of the 19th century: Claude Monnet and Edgard Degas, of whom he was a friend among Impressionist circles, Théodore Deck for ceramics factories, as well as Giovanni Boldinni with whom he established a lasting friendship, and finally Marcel Proust, from whom he inspired the character of Elstir. From his apprenticeship, he was attracted by pictorial modernities, whether the work of open-air painters, the Impressionists, or the portrait painters of the Belle Époque such as Giovanni Boldini, through whom he gradually gained to the overseas market. This lithograph, probably made around 1900, presents a ball scene animated by multiple moving protagonists who converse and observe a dancing couple. One detects there the attitudes and the acoutrements of the time, this lithography is particularly well felt, in particular on the level of the rendering of the dynamics. The work is in very good condition and has dimensions of 19 cm wide and 25 cm high (excluding frame and marie-louise).