Footnotes

This work is registered in the Françoise Gilot Archive.

Provenance
Marcelle Jaujard Collection, France (a gift from the artist).
(Possibly) Galerie Makassar, Paris.
Zangrilli & Co., London.
Private collection, UK (acquired circa 2000).


The present drawing likely arose from Françoise Gilot's design work for the ballet Hérakles (1953), choreographed by Bertrand Castelli, a noted theatrical figure and Gilot's occasional lover. It depicts two figures intimately caught in a backstage moment: Janine Charrat, the celebrated prodigy of French ballet, and Geneviève Aliquot, her poised counterpart. Charrat, already renowned for her precocious talent and daring choreographies, commands the composition with a profile reminiscent of Greek and Roman relief sculpture. Gilot's signature fusion of figuration with abstracted elements is evident in their stylised visages, as well as in the bold crimson swathes above, which seem to evoke stage curtains and imbue a sense of fleeting anticipation into this backstage vignette. The figure to the right, Geneviève Aliquot, exudes a statuesque presence, her delicately traced features and twisting horn-like tendrils of hair recalling the mythological iconography that fascinated Gilot following her family trips to Greece. Traces of Jean Cocteau's stage designs and drawings can be seen in the theatrical and mythical aura of the linework that invokes her.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Gilot synthesised classical Greek motifs with contemporary modernist sensibilities, exploring movement, form and colour with unparalleled vivacity. This inspired her design work for Hérakles, a production in which Charrat brought to life her remarkable physicality and expressive range under the guidance of Castelli. Gilot's acute observation of dancers in rehearsal and her nuanced understanding of theatrical space translate into a composition that is both intimate and monumental, the figures at once real and emblematic. By capturing this fleeting yet charged moment between her collaborators, Gilot not only celebrates their artistry but also embeds her own personal connections and experiences into the composition.

Gilot's affectionate dedication to Marcelle Jaujard enriches the present work with a distinguished provenance. Marcelle was the wife of Jacques Jaujard (1895–1967), the eminent French civil servant who, as Director of the Musées Nationaux and of the École du Louvre, played a decisive role in safeguarding France's artistic heritage during the Second World War. It was Jaujard who masterminded the evacuation of the Louvre's treasures — including the Mona Lisa — ahead of the German occupation, acting in defiance of Vichy orders to protect the nation's patrimony. Decorated with the Médaille de la Résistance and the Légion d'Honneur for his wartime service, Jaujard remains celebrated as a guardian of French culture. Gilot's loving engagement with the world of ballet, her mythological inspirations and her intimate relationships thereby converge in the present work, whose provenance further underscores the intertwined histories of art, resistance and cultural guardianship that defined mid-twentieth-century France.