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PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION, LONDON
Lot 26
THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE(1862-1926)Silhouette de Madame Georges Flé (Laure Flé)
19 October 2023, 17:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £5,376 inc. premium
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THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE (1862-1926)
Silhouette de Madame Georges Flé (Laure Flé)
stamped with the artist's atelier stamp (lower right)
charcoal and pencil on paper
62 x 37.6cm (24 7/16 x 14 13/16in).
Executed circa 1901
stamped with the artist's atelier stamp (lower right)
charcoal and pencil on paper
62 x 37.6cm (24 7/16 x 14 13/16in).
Executed circa 1901
Footnotes
Provenance
Élisabeth van Rysselberghe Collection, Paris (the artist's daughter).
Galerie Pogu, Paris.
Galerie Minotaure, Paris.
Anon. sale, Kunstgalerij De Vuyst, Lokeren, 10 December 1968.
JPL Fine Arts, London, no. V/RYS/22/2847.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 5 February 2003, lot 210.
Private collection, London (probably acquired at the above sale).
Literature
R. Feltkamp, Théo van Rysselberghe, 1862-1926, Brussels, 2003, no. 1901-020 (illustrated p. 335).
The present work was executed as a study for Théo van Rysselberghe's 1901 painting, La promenade, which was exhibited at the 1904 Salon de la Libre Esthétique in Brussels. The Belgian state acquired the painting through that salon, and it now resides in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. The foreground of La promenade depicts Jean Dominique – the male nomme de plume for the famous Belgian poet Marie Closset.
The figure depicted in the present sketch is Laure Flé, an opera singer who was married to the composer Georges Flé. The Flés hosted van Rysselberghe and other artists at their villa in Ambleteuse in northern France, during which van Rysselberghe completed a series of paintings and sketches of the couple. This sketch was previously in the collection of the artist's daughter, Élisabeth van Rysselberghe, also a key character of this Modern literary and artistic milieu. Long after her relationship with the British war poet Rupert Brooke, she went on to have a daughter with the French existentialist author André Gide, whom she named Catherine.