Pour Elfie, affectueusement ♥ Joyeux Anniversaire !!! ✿✿✿ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9rqMy1TBJEaRDjwatctOag https://www.youtube.com/user/Elfietude Music: “Unchained Melody” ( Alex North) - piano Harry Völker https://www.youtube.com/user/Chopinsperwer :::::::::::: Charles Louis André Bernard Boutet de Monvel, (Paris, 9 August 1881 – Açores, 28 October 1949). Bernard Boutet de Monvel was the son of Louis-Maurice de Monvel, a major illustrator of 19th century French children's books. Bernard trained under his father and under Luc-Olivier Merson (1849-1920). Impossibly handsome, he lived a film- script-worthy life. In society, his charisma, wit and impeccable manners made him a prince among the Parisian dandies and the international café society he depicted. Bernard abandoned the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand at fifteen to become an artist. By age seventeen, he was a smart young blade and "habitué" of Maxim’s. Like his father, de Monvel became an illustrator, and also an advertising artist. After World War I duty, he traveled to Morocco, where he spent the better part of seven years. There he painted orientalist Moroccan scenes, perhaps influenced by the work of Merson. The portraiture of the gilded world that the artist shared with his subjects established his reputation in France and across the Atlantic. When he arrived in New York in 1926, a large show of his Paris paintings at the Park Avenue Anderson Galleries was greeted by a rapturous reception. Soon, du Ponts and Astors, Fricks and Mellons, Whitneys and Vanderbilts were vying to commission their portraits from the irresistible Frenchman. Among other exceptional portraits are the intimate family paintings of Boutet de Monvel’s beautiful Anglo-Chilean wife, Delfina Edwards Bello, whom he married in 1921, and of their daughter, Sylvie, born in 1922. Delfina playing the guitar, Delfina wearing an ensemble by the couturier Pierre Piquet, Sylvie at nineteen with a geometrically perfect hairstyle – all exhibit the artist’s special knack for sophistication and modernity. A small 1922 portrait of Delfina in profile, wearing a feathered Jeanne Lanvin hat, had a wide ripple effect. Exhibited in the artist’s first New York show in 1926, it became a model for a series of similar portrait profiles of socially prominent Americans. Starting in 1926, de Monvel made yearly trips to the United States, where his society portraits were in much demand. De Monvel — elegant, charming, amusing and always beautifully dressed — attended the same dinners and balls as upper crust New York society, where he would easily attain new clients. Firstly known for his masterly etching work, his pioneering "rectilinear painting" laid the foundations for what would later be known as Art Deco. He became well-known in the U.S.A. also as a portrait painter and travelled extensively to that country. De Monvel's portraits have often been described as "icy." Beautifully composed and technically smooth, they are beautiful likenesses that nonetheless don't reveal sitters' inner warmth or personality. Perhaps that suited clients who were more interested in projecting status. De Monvel painted striking cityscapes of New York and often incorporated architecture into his portraits. De Monvel died in the Azores on October 28, 1949, when an airplane he was riding crashed into a mountain side. ::::::::: Jane Burden Morris’ Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Laika231

• published: 01 May 2017
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