1 - Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861–1942)

Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861–1942) Les Demoiselles de Ferry, 1910; oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left; 98 x 95 cm; Bibliography: > Jane Roberts, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Online Catalogue Raisonné, listed under no. RM 911 Condition Report: Framed A masterpiece of his mature period and a vibrant testament to Jacques-Émile Blanche’s virtuosity, this double portrait captures the spirit of the Belle Époque with striking brilliance. A celebrated portraitist of Paris’s literary and artistic elite, having immortalized figures ranging from Marcel Proust to Jean Cocteau and Virginia Woolf, Jacques-Émile Blanche displays here the full subtlety of his psychological touch and his sense of composition. Painted in 1910, this masterful composition brings together two young women in a pose of great modernity. The painter captures a suspended moment, tinged with a gentle bourgeois melancholy: one of the figures casually holds a wooden tennis racket, an inseparable attribute of Edwardian high society’s leisure activities and the seaside resorts of the era, particularly in Dieppe, where Blanche loved to work. The work shines for its exceptional treatment of materials. The delicate transparency of the white lace blouses contrasts boldly with the bright red of the standing figure’s collar and the graphic stripes of her skirt. The interplay of gazes—one direct and questioning, the other lost in the distance—lends this dual portrait a captivating narrative depth. In the background, the vibrant, Impressionist brushstrokes of a verdant landscape beneath a cloudy sky accentuate the freedom of execution of an artist at the height of his art, masterfully engaging with the tradition of British portraiture. A major work, a testament to an era of elegance and change.