Marie LAURENCIN (1883-1956). 28 L.A.S., 1936-1939,... - Lot 25 - Ader

Lot 25
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 2 304EUR
Marie LAURENCIN (1883-1956). 28 L.A.S., 1936-1939,... - Lot 25 - Ader
Marie LAURENCIN (1883-1956). 28 L.A.S., 1936-1939, to Miss Marie-Thérèse Évrard; 48 pages, mostly in-8 on green paper with her initials. Interesting correspondence about a fresco project in a school. It was in September 1936 at a Soroptimist meeting that Marie Laurencin met Miss Évrard, a teacher at the Lycée Camille-Sée, and very quickly the latter suggested that she come and decorate a room in her school, which piqued the painter's curiosity: "Until now, I have only done what is called easel painting and large surfaces are unknown to me", but she would be ready to "take the plunge. Despite the physical conditions of the job, she accepts "the decoration of the children's room. [...] I know how much you care about me and faith lifts mountains" ... The two women become fast friends. December 1936. She remembers their walk, "there were only art dealers and like a shining star, the sublime Vuillard"... She begins to work on the project: "I am slowly beginning to enter the large walls of the children's room. It is you who pushes me there dressed in your white dress and with this lost profile of a soft firmness. No more exhibitions and their so material side"... January 1937. "Here is the story of this small portrait. The girl is eighteen years old, she is redheaded, always well-coiffed, charming - she calls me Aunt Marie - her mother is an old friend. Her parents have lost their fortune, and have had "the unfortunate idea of making her a dancer"; the girl now works in cabarets, cafés-concerts, etc. and loses her freshness, which Marie Laurencin deplores... Mars. The painters at the Lycée Jules Ferry advised her "to paint on the walls, which was your first idea. The price still had to be discussed and she had to be well organized: "Here I will be surrounded by you, the teachers, the students - a quarter of an hour's walk from my house - Fra Angelico had no better place". She went to the color dealer to see the scale and was already thinking about the models to be made... April 7. The Beaux-Arts offered her 20,000 francs for this fresco, she was advised to ask for fifty.... "Otherwise I had a very pleasant English portrait: the wife, the husband, the two children full of charm. I painted only her - a beautiful red coat and jewelry"... She ordered two small canvases for the models of the two large walls, and would prefer to do the work alone; but she was not offered enough: "What it is to be a woman. I really don't dare ask for fifty thousand francs. It would be possible to give thirty thousand"...; it will be necessary to put the models on the tile; she thinks of asking "little Chériane" to help her, but it will be necessary to pay her. April 9. The Beaux-Arts bought her a large canvas "a woman lying down - half done for 10,000 francs", so she can accept "the 20,000 francs for your school". The walls will have to be prepared... April 15. She is not happy with her Sunday, she worked "with the paint - there is this awful feeling of damaging what we do. But I can't help it - I always feel that there is something wrong"... May. She wants to make an appointment with the painter at the high school who would take care of the "tiling of the walls" of her models... She finished the model of the bottom: "round of children - small house with balcony and a horse. It is almost done in watercolor but for the purpose it must be redone in gouache"... May-June. "My two models are ready", she waits to be able to present them for approval, but she worries about the state of the walls to be painted: "they are painted with oil and no painting can take on that by making a galimatias which would harm the freshness Laurencine. I intend to flood you with this so-called freshness"... July-August. High vacations: she tells him about her different trips: England, Châtel-Guyon, etc., but is surprised not to have any news from the representatives of the Beaux-Arts for her fresco, and from the painter who was to prepare the walls: "men are strange"... Mid-October. In Auvergne she was surrounded by children, and was able to think about the walls of the classroom. She showed her model "to friends who like what I do and know about it. They said to me "Marie it will be awful enlarged", and I felt that, like you, they were right. So my friend, it is impossible to enlarge anything of my models [...] and the whole execution by me is absolutely impossible too. The panel of the teaching palace two meters by two meters tired me. I could not stand and paint for more than half an hour. [...] I declare myself too tired for this kind of work. The horrors of the exhibition will go away but for your walls [...] it will be forever. And
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