FRENCH school of the end of the XIXth century... - Lot 52 - Pousse-Cornet

Lot 52
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1000 - 2000 EUR
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Result : 1 200EUR
FRENCH school of the end of the XIXth century... - Lot 52 - Pousse-Cornet
FRENCH school of the end of the XIXth century - beginning of the XXth century : Cartoon portrait of Léon DELAFOSSE (French composer and pianist, friend of Marcel Proust). The drawer of this portrait could be Rita DE MAUNY (XIX-XX). Pastel. 62x44cm. Framed under glass Léon Delafosse, a distinguished pianist, was heard in the Parisian salons before shining in the great symphonic concerts of Colonne. Later, he gave recitals at the Salle Erard and triumphed in England. He amazed Marcel Proust, who made him the model for his character of Morel in La Recherche. After having been the protégé of Robert de Montesquiou Delafosse was the protégé of the Bartholoni family, whose residence at Coudrée, on the shores of Lake Geneva, was frequented by Marcel Proust and especially his friend Clément de Maugny whose castle was not far away. Maugny's viscountess née Rita Busse had a great talent for drawing, with a marked taste for caricature and comic distortion, as her friend Marie de Chevilly reminds us: "When you went to Maugny, you were first and foremost given the honours of the big albums full of ferociously contorted characters, generally political, underlined with appropriate legends". Up until the 1930s and beyond, Delafosse was still seen in Savoy, in the company of Jeanne Bartholoni, frequenting the intellectual society of the Maugny family. It is therefore conceivable that his pastel caricature, surmounted by a mysterious profile of an unknown man who could evoke Clément de Maugny, is due to the mischievous pencil of Rita de Maugny.
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