Past works

Vue de Rouen • Claude Monet

Claude Monet is undoubtedly one of Marcel Proust’s favorite painters, of whom he never missed an exhibition. In 1899 he wrote three fragments on the “Father of Impressionism '' following his visit to the exhibition Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley at the Galerie Durand-Ruel.
He mentions the Cathedrals of Rouen (1895) in his essays on John Ruskin and in Jean Santeuil, where he praises “all that Monet is constantly repeating to us: 'God, how there is sun today on the sea, see how the shadows are black and cool, see how the stones are pink, see how far away the boats flutter in a volatilized sea, but also having, the smallest, its little black shadow (F. d'Étretat). See how everything shimmers, how everything is a mirage by this thawing: you no longer know whether it is ice or sun, and all these pieces of ice break and carry the reflections of the sky, and the trees are so bright that we no longer know whether their russet tone comes from autumn or from their species, and we no longer know where we are, whether it is the bed of a river or the clearing of a wood ”(at M. Ch. Ephrussi).
What Proust admires in the pioneering genius of Monet, whose painting functions as a "magic mirror", is the figure of an artist as he likes them: inventor of a new way of painting; creator of a new world.

Inrō & Neksuke

The Belle Époque (Edwardian Era) undoubtedly invented the concept of art collection as we know it today: an accumulation of artwork installed in all rooms of private houses as an expansion of the Renaissance and classical age cabinets of wonders. These set-ups create exceptional sceneries which allow one to enjoy a small domestic museum in their very home. Japonisme, a French term referring to the rise of Japanese art in France in the 19th century, is reflected in all artistic and literary creation at the end of the 19th century . Asian arts–particularly Japanese, whose pavilions at the Universal Exhibitions of Paris in 1867 and 1878 impressed many–became one of the fashionable trends in the European collectors’ circles.
The Belle Epoque is also the period during which large collections of Asian art come to France: that of Emile Guimet―who built a museum in his name in 1888 to house it, that of Henri Cernuschi―who also opened a museum in 1898, and that of Clémence and Adolphe d'Ennery―who handed down their collections to the French government. These collectors of Japanese pieces were particularly interested in the decorative arts, as this set of Inros and Netrees shows. Once collected and exhibited in large numbers, these precious decorated lacquer boxes worn by men on their kimono belt become altogether a sort of modern installation made by small delicate paintings.

Andre Gide et ses amis au café Maure de l’Exposition universelle de 1900 • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Jacques-Émile Blanche saw André Gide for the first time at a dinner party aat the house of an eccentric client of Doctor Blanche, the Princess Ouroussof. Their friendship—made up of ups and downs, distance, and yet a certain ease—was shown throughout three portraits, the last of which created in 1912.
In this painting depicting a scene at the World's Fair, the writer appears young with the allure of an esthete and a seductive gaze. This fresco was one of the most important, monumental canvases of Jacques-Émile Blanche, and it shows a rare scene with many different character and an original style of décor. The portrait of this group—presented at the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1901 under the title « M. André Gide, Rouart, Chanvin, Ghéon, Athman-ben-Sala au Trocadéro (Exposition de 1900) » —resembles Dutch portraits from the 17th century. It alludes to the atmosphere of an exotic party at the World Fair in 1900, where a “Moorish café was installed in a small pavilion exactly replicating a food kiosk from the Palace of Manouba, near Tunis,” Blanche wrote in his memoir « La pêche aux souvenirs ».
Around André Gide are various poets and wrtiers: Eugène Rouart, in the background on the right; Charles Chanvin, friend of Gide and Charles-Louis Philippe on the left, and in the foreground on the left Henri Ghéon. Athman-ben-Sala is in the middle, whom Ghéon and Gide brought back to France from their trip to Algeria, an initiatory trip that fascinated Gide and had a strong influence on his life and his work.
“I have nothing to teach you from this meticulous analyst and observer of self, but this brand new frenzy, his gestures of freedom without remorse in which he still tried himself, he has always draped them in this vast houppelande [...], Gide has always been serious and with me at least of restraint in these words excluding the confidences of an order which would have bothered me,” Blanche said about the time of this portrait. Henri Ghéon’s smile alludes to that of a Frans Hals drinker, an artist about whom Blanche had written an article.
A few years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Gide became the titulary figure of literature and publishing, as well as the boss of the Nouvelle revue française, a popular literary magazine. Unfortunately for him, however, in 1913 André Gide rejected Marcel Proust’s manuscript of Swann’s Way, before signing an exclusive contract between Gallimard editions and Marcel Proust in 1916 in order to make up for this historic error.

Anna de Noailles au manchon • Otto Wegener

Close friend of Marcel Proust, poetess and and princess, Anna de Noailles corresponded intensely with
with the writer at the time of this portrait. "I admire no writer more than her, I have for her a deep friendship,"
Marcel Proust said of her in a letter to Emmanuel Berl written in 1916.
This photograph taken by the master photographer Otto Wegener was found in the collection of his studio. Thus dressed, Anna de Noailles seems to be going on a journey.

Beuvron-en-Auge Panorama (Vue de Beuvron-en-Auge) • David Hockney

One of the world's best-known and most recognized artists, David Hockney (b. 1937) settled in 2019 in Beuvron-en-Auge, a village of 200 inhabitants, in a beautiful 17th century half-timbered building about 15 kilometers from Cabourg.
The English painter, long time resident in Los Angeles, found in Normandy motifs that renewed his work. "The French know how to live, they know how to enjoy themselves," he explained. He continues to develop quasi-autobiographical art, painting the views and scenes that surround him, starting with his house and this""Great Court," a body of work that was part of an exhibition in New York.
Since 2011, David Hockney has also been experimenting with the digital tablet as a new medium of creation, using painting software developed especially for him. He also continues to paint, publishing his works in the form of prints in response to the tremendous commercial success that his work has had over the past 15 years. The Centre Pompidou, the Tate Britain and the MET in New York devoted a major retrospective to David Hockney in 2017 to celebrate the 80th birthday of this artist who knows how to remain young in his work and in his artistic research among the most innovative.
The presence of two of Hockney's works in our exhibition testifies to the enduring power of inspiration and attraction of the Norman landscape. A great reader of Proust, Hockney is also in Normandy in search of the passage of time, painting the various seasons that follow one another, as he did in the Yorkshire of his childhood in another part of his work. Somewhat philosophically, he sums up the lessons of his experience immersed in the Normandy countryside: "Like idiots, we have lost our connection with nature even though we are fully part of it. All this will end one day. So what lessons can we learn from it? I am 83 years old, I will die. We die because we are born. The only things that matter in life are food and love, in that order, and our little dog Ruby. I truly believe that, and for me, the source of art is in love. I love life".

Blue silk dress

Boni de Castellane déguisé en Tayllerand • Otto Wegener

Friend of Marcel Proust, Boni de Castellane was an inspiration for the character Robert de Saint-Loup in In Search of Lost Time.
As a dandy who loved socialite parties, he is pictured here wearing his ancestor's costume for a ball, an event that was very in style at the time. Boni de Castellane also frequented the Normandy coast. A figure of the high society, he was often used as a model by painters (including Albert Besnard) and photographers.

Boudin travaillant à Trouville • Paul César Helleu

Eugène Boudin was the precursor of the generation of Paul César Helleu and a visionary master for many painters, who announced impressionism. He was fascinated by the Normandy coast and its maritime culture.

Champ de courses près de Londres • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Jacques-Émile Blanche has frequented England extensively since the age of nine, as the English elite have frequented France and particularly Normandy, accessible by the ferry that arrives in Dieppe (where the Blanche family owns a house). Jacques-Émile Blanche even lived for several years in London, admiring English painting, but also James Tissot (1836-1902), a painter of French origin exiled in London, or James Abbott McNeill Whistler, an American living in England.
During the Belle Époque, racecourse was a major social event, attended by all strata of society, including artists and writers. Jacques-Émile Blanche has executed several works on this theme. This racecourse near London echoes the English regattas that Jacques-Émile Blanche also admires during his stays, socio-cultural shows that combine sport and elegance.

Moonlight, Varengeville – Jean-Francis Auburtin

"I envy you, moonlight that opalises the bottom of the valley to makeone believe that it is a lake."
Marcel Proust to Louisa de Mornand, 1905.

Dans le jardin • Charles Angrand

Charles Théophile Angrand (1854-1926) was born in Criquetot-sur-Ouville (Seine-Maritime), and trained at the municipal drawing school in Rouen under Gustave Morin. His work was exhibited for the first time in 1878 at the Salon des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Normandy was the focus of his entire career, and it was in Rouen that he died in 1926.
He was very influenced by Seurat until the latter's death in 1891. This painting Dans le jardin is a testimony to this period of excellence of the Rouen painter. Angrand is undoubtedly the most innovative of the Rouen painters nicknamed the "musketeers" (with Fréchon, Delattre, Lemaître). In addition to the Impressionist aesthetic that he adopted very quickly, Angrand was passionate about optical theories, and accompanied his friend Seurat in his chromatic research. Together they studied the division of tone, as well as analyzed color and light. An intellectual approach that gave birth to a new technique: no more brushstrokes, nor irregular strokes, but dotted lines of pure colors that come to life and blend under the eye of the viewer. Angrand's paintings become multicolored mosaics with simplified forms. In 1891, after the death of his master Seurat, he abandoned color to devote himself to drawing and pastel, evoking with tenderness the countryside of the Pays de Caux, the gestures of the peasants, which remained the subject of a great portion of his work.

Deauville, le bassin aux yachts pavoisés • Paul César Helleu

Paul César Helleu was one of Proust's inspirations for the character of Elstir in « In Search of Lost Time ».

Dieppe, le quai du Pollet • Léon-Jules Lemaître

After studying at the Academy of Painting in Rouen and then in Jean-Léon Gérôme's studio in Paris, Léon-Jules Lemaître (1850-1905) devoted himself to plein air painting during the vogue of Impressionism. He was part of the Rouen School, which also included his friends Frechon, Angrand and Delattre. "Like the three musketeers, they are four, young, ardent...," wrote a critic at the time.
The canvases that Lemaître painted with great energy were rather despised by the informed public of the time. Somewhat disillusioned by the lack of response to his impressionist art, Lemaître eventually adopted a more classical technique to depict his city of Rouen, its architecture and inhabitants, and other urban scenes of Norman towns, in a style that can be described as neo-impressionist.
The painter was interested in the little people, and his work allows us to look at another, more popular facet of Normandy during the Belle Époque. In this painting, Lemaître captures the bustling life on the quay of the Pollet in Dieppe, the historic fishing district. The figures are immersed in a typical foggy halo, facing the wind and the harshness of the weather. At the same time, Lemaître painted in another canvas another Dieppe quay, the Quai Duquesne, the fish market of the same Norman town, with a crowd of characters crowding around—that painting is now preserved in the Château-Musée de Dieppe.

Divertissement • Gustave de Jonghe

A Belgian painter living in France who specialized in family portraits, Gustave De Jonghe (1829-1893) is considered the direct successor of Alfred Stevens. Son of a famous landscape painter, he first learned from his father. During his career he painted numerous family portraits, always in sumptuous interiors, as in this Divertissement, which made his paintings an important detailed testimony of the bourgeois family life, its customs and decorations at the dawn of the Belle Époque. De Jonghe was highly successful during his lifetime.

Élégante au chapeau • Otto Wegener

This print, an extremely rare photographic format at the time, was intended for the boutique of Otto Wegener's studio, to be exhibited as a promotional item. The model is elegantly dressed in bourgeois clothing—an eminently Proustian fiction, for Marcel Proust's characters are also fictions composed from memories and impressions.

Étude de costume • René-Xavier Prinet

René-Xavier Prinet set up a small studio in his house on the seawall in Cabourg, the "Double-Six" (in reference to the domino game that was very fashionable at the time). He often painted sketches on the beach, as close as possible to his motif, like Eugène Boudin. This is the first time this study is presented in a public institution's exhibition.

Étude pour le portrait de Bergson • Jacques-Émile Blanche

François Mauriac admired his friend Jacques-Émile Blanche's talent to "create around him an atmosphere that was that of his time and that his paintings have fixed. [...] Nothing can prevent us from having recourse to him, who fixed the illustrious and charming faces of the end of the past century and the first half of this one, the faces, but also the landscapes, the beaches and the Norman gardens, the houses that the war destroyed. He is a painter who has memories to revive, a story to tell.”
This story is that of a world that no longer exists, a "lost time" that intersects with Proust's work, accompanies it, even illustrates it in part—even if it does not equal it. In 1919, Proust signed the preface to Blanche's essay, De David à Degas, which was dedicated "to Marcel Proust, in memory of the Auteuil of his childhood and my youth, and as a tribute of admiration for the author of « Du côté de chez Swann ». In this text, he defends the work of his painter friend against the image of a worldly artist that will follow Blanche through time. Proust, who in his early writings claimed to be a portrait painter, recalls that the models Blanche painted were, at the time, the paintings of friends "whose merit he was almost the only one to celebrate", and goes so far as to see in his comrade a clairvoyant artist who "possessed in him, like all men assured of the future, this perspective of time where one must know how to place oneself to look at the works.”
The Belle Époque was short-lived for realist portraitists like Blanche. Photography became very popular and condemned them.” Is it only photography that will preserve the character and physiognomy of these officials of the Great War?" wonders Blanche, who divided his life between Paris and Normandy. “One day, the problem of imitation will have to be dealt with in depth; the expression of these faces is, after all, the most noble goal of the painter, so why do young people hand over to the photographer?” And the painter added: "Today art begins at the "deformation", and the painter confuses it with the "interpretation" which is, indeed, the very Art. But... let us distinguish!”
The end of this era at the start of World War I was also the end of an artistic genre, that of the realistic portrait. Blanche's paintings were also the last fires of the ""resembling portrait,” the art of the Sargents and Whistlers, the Boldinis and the Lászlós. Blanche was not in painting what Proust was in literature, but his painted work often had the traits of Proustian pictures. Such is the case with this portrait of Henri Bergson. In In Search of Lost Time, Proust explores "the immense edifice of memory" of which Bergson had made the most advanced philosophical analysis of his time, with Matière et mémoire (1896). Like Bergson, Proust felt that the past would never be constituted if it did not coexist with the present of which it is the past—one of the keys to understanding the deep meaning of the chrononym of the Belle Époque.
For these two cousins (by marriage), who did not reach the same conclusions, there is no perception that is not linked to a memory. About this portrait painted in several versions of studies, Jacque-Émile Blanche says: "It is therefore necessary, of this Bergson, with the five studies (including the head that was pushed during the laborious sessions in Paris), we must therefore make an image for his followers, something that is what we imagine Bergson to be. Spend the morning bowing the whole body, bowing the head in the thinker's bow (and that redness, that "congestion" of the philosopher that this unfortunate man is afflicted with: transform all that. Insist on the Veronese green of the background).”

Étude pour le portrait de Bernstein • Jacques-Émile Blanche

At the beginning of the 20th century, Jacques-Émile Blanche used his portraits to immortalize the literary figures of his era, many of whom were also among his friends. Blanche was born into a very wealthy family and did not necessarily need to sell his paintings to make a living. He had the opportunity to choose his own models for his portraits. His work as a portrait artist is thus comparable to a writer, in that the painter shows us a society and the world of its desires.
Successful playwright and friend of Marcel Proust, Henry Bernstein also frequented Normandy. He is famous for his pièce de boulevard « Le Marché » (The Market, 1900) and « Le Voleur » (The Thief, 1906). In 1911 he was the victim of antisemitic criticism from Action Française, which judged his play « Après moi » (After Me) as a "Jewish" work. Bernstein was also one of the inspirations for the character Octave, Verdurin’s nephew in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Beginning in 1926, Bernstein directed the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris before fleeing to the United States during World War II.
This portrait contains the sobriety and dynamism of Blanche's studies, less elaborate and more spontaneous than the final portraits. To the contemporary eye, these studies are almost stronger, more directly reflecting the spirit and attitude of the model, much like a documentary photograph would.

Étude pour le portrait de la Comtesse Anna de Noailles • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Born Princess Bibesco Bassaraba of Brancovan, Anna of Noailles was an important poet and a close friend of Marcel Proust. The two often wrote to each other during Proust’s stays in Cabourg. Anna de Noailles was the daughter of a Romanian prince and a Greek pianist, and in 1897 she married the Count Mathieu de Noailles. Together with her husband, she led a brilliant social life, receiving the intellectual, literary and artistic elite of the beginning of the century in her salon on Avenue Hoche and later Rue Scheffer. Some of those grand figures included Francis Jammes, Claudel, Colette, Gide, Valéry, Cocteau, Max Jacob or Mauriac.

She had an intense but complicated sentimental relationship with Maurice Barrès, whom she met at Jacque-Émile Blanche’s house, which at the time of this painting had ended in a break-up. This powerful personality with an irresistible eloquence fascinated almost all those she approached, not without sometimes arousing a touch of irony, sensitive, for example, in the pages that Blanche devoted to her in « La Pêche aux souvenirs ». Anna de Noailles established her reputation as a poet with the publication of “The Innumerable Heart,” her first collection, in 1901, followed by “The Shadow of Days” in 1902, and “The Dazzle” in 1907. Her novels « La Nouvelle Esperance », « Le Visage émerveillé » and « La Domination », published between 1903 and 1905, were equally successful.
On May 19, 1909, she attended the dress rehearsal of Prince Igor's Polovtsian Dances at the Châtelet with Blanche, Cocteau and Reynaldo Hahn, and later contributed to the social patronage of the revolutionary shows conceived by Serge Diaghilev on Fokine's choreographies. Affected by serious health problems from 1911 onwards, she imposed on herself intermittent periods of reclusion during which she received her guests amidst a mess of vials, medicine and droppers. Blanche reports in « La Pêche aux souvenirs » that he painted the two studies in the poetess' home, 13, rue Scheffer, in 1912-1913, at a time when she was abusing the chemical substance ether.
This sketch and another existing one are characteristic of Blanche's method in his studies, which was to fix the physiognomy of her models in small, quickly brushed canvases, sometimes executed in succession, as if trying to capture the movement of the personality and its expression.

Étude pour le portrait de la Comtesse Bavarowska • Jacques-Émile Blanche

The work of Jacques-Émile Blanche shows the faces of a world that has disappeared, famous faces or the faces of figures of the world that posterity has forgotten. “I was born a portrait artist, a new face never bores me! Extracting the secret from any soul, by observing, by listening to the model, is this not the intoxication of the psychologist, the moralist, the sociologist?” Jacques-Émile Blanche confided to his friend Lucien Corpechot. This painting represents the Countess Bavarowska of whom Blanche speaks in his journal like this: “The charming woman! She is for us the whole Polish soul, laughing and emotional, sensitive, ready to cry, impractical, simple, complicated, and proud, the Great Lady ruined, clumsy farmer, horse escaped in the fields ... [...] Madame Bavarowska [sic] could not keep the pose: she was restless; her face, by turns wide or thin, was distorted with laughter, or lengthened excessively. Her eyelids were drooping. She told of the miseries of her Galicia, the hard life there on the Russian border, on her unproductive lands, the kindness of her in-laws, boredom; the boring boredom of this old house and its homework, and especially its boredom [...]" (Manuscript, Paris, Institute Library).

Étude pour le portrait de Winnaretta Singer, princesse Edmond de Polignac • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Daughter of Isaac Singer, the inventor of the sewing machine, Winnaretta Singer became the Princess of Polignac and one of the most famous hosts of the artistic salons of the era, where everyone in Paris came. She shared a love of musique with her husband, the Prince of Polignac, who himself was a composer. Winnaretta Singer, also known as “Aunt Winnie,” was indeed throughout her life a benefactor for the music of her time, welcoming and promoting in the large music room of her mansion on Avenue Henri-Martin, the most innovative young composers: Vincent d'Indy, Emmanuel Chabrier, Ernest Chausson, Erik Satie, Gabriel Fauré, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Reynaldo Hahn, Darius Milhaud and even Germaine Tailleferre.
She died in London on November 26, 1943. During the funeral service organized in her memory, melodies by Bach, Mozart and Fauré were played, the final tribute to this inveterate music lover.

Falaise de Varengeville, nuage rose • Jean-Francis Auburtin

Nicknamed "The Symbolist of the Sea", Jean-Francis Auburtin, friend of Auguste Rodin, settled in Varengeville-sur-mer in 1907. The small town fascinated and inspired him, and after his death, he was buried there.

Femme à l’ombrelle rouge • Auguste Durst

Femme au jardin, Marcelle • Maurice Marinot

Maurice Marinot (1882-1960), better known in history as a master glass artist, was nevertheless primarily a painter at the beginning of his career. He exhibited his paintings in 1905 with the Fauves at the Salon des Indépendants, then at the Salon d'automne.
This painting of Femme au jardin, Marcelle is remarkable for its modernity, and archetypal of the "fauve" style which exacerbates the colors. This "Marcelle" by Marinot is in some ways the cousin of Matisse's Woman with a Hat (1905) which certainly influenced Maurice Marinot. In 1911 the artist then began working with glassware, which became his medium of choice.

Femme en toilette de bal • Eugène Carrière

Eugène Carrière was quickly introduced to personalities from the literary and artistic world whose features he immortalizes: Paul Verlaine, Paul Gauguin, Alphonse Daudet, Auguste Rodin, Georges Clemenceau...

Feuilles de printemps • Charles Fréchon

Charles Fréchon (1856-1929) was considered the leader of the group of "musketeers" of the École de Rouen, along with Leon-Jules Lemaître, Charles Angrand, and Joseph Delattre. Charles Fréchon was a key figure in the artistic life of Rouen during the Belle Époque.
Fréchon had a completely different vision of impressionist painting. His painting was celebrated for its intensity of effect and above all, its sincerity. This painting Feuilles de printemps would be the first painting by Fréchon to enter the collections of the city of Rouen when the artist was 51 years old. Fréchon was seduced by Impressionist works because they were painted in the open air. His light colors applied to the canvas in small, light strokes create landscapes of great freshness with the rhythm of the seasons: spring leaves or leaves reddened by autumn, or snowy meadows...
Fréchon was able to perfectly capture the rich and complex nuances of the Norman countryside, whose variety he immortalized over time.

Fin de déjeuner • Auguste Durst

French pictorial life during the Belle Époque was strongly marked by the advent of open air painting. Auguste Durst (1842-1930) devoted his work to the exploration of nature with this quasi-documentary technique. He exhibited his paintings at the Salon des artistes français when he was 26. Durst's paintings, however, revealed itself later in an influence of the impressionist painting of the 1880's which marked him deeply. He became attached to the popular countryside, farm life and to the farm animals. However, his work is related to the "Barbizon School" more than to Impressionism. In these types of paintings, the landscapes were a stage for observing slivers of life in the countryside in a certain intimate atmosphere and relaxed style.
Most of the landscape paintings by Auguste Durst were set in the vicinity of the painter's home in Saint-Vaast d'Equiqueville near Dieppe. This « Déjeuner » dated from the period when Durst was most successful with his naturalistic themes. In 1898, the French government bought his painting « Dindons », « soleil couchant », and in 1900 they presented a « Une paysanne au soleil » at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. French President Emile Loubet, who met him in person, made him a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1902, and the government bought many of his other works. World War I overshadowed this artist with such a sensitive painting style, and less was said about Durst afterwards.

First edition of “Du Côté de chez Swann” • Marcel Proust

Original edition in first printing with typographical errors which will be corrected in later versions. The most famous of these is undoubtedly "Grasset's fault", where the typographic bar "|" slipped between Grasset's E and T at the bottom of the title page. Another typo is the title page dated 1914 while the date November 8, 1913 does appear on the last leaf, on the back of page 523.
An advertising page of "Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée" can also be found there, testifying to this first self-authored edition for Marcel Proust.

First edition of “Du Côté de chez Swann”, Gallimard 1917 • Marcel Proust

Gallimard convinced Grasset to give him the unsold copies of the 1913 edition and the following ones. The original cover was replaced by the famous cream cover of the NRF and on the title page, below Grasset, a butterfly of the NRF dated 1917 was affixed, allowing sales even though the Gallimard edition was not will come out in 1919. The rarity of this work comes from the fact that it is one of the only ones in the original edition with the fault of Grasset and the finished print on page 523 to have been modified

First edition of “In Search of Lost Time” • Marcel Proust

Thirteen volumes. First edition, copies of which are reimposed on Lafuma pur fil (only large paper), nominative in the name of Maurice Heine, collector and bibliophile, publisher and great specialist of the Marquis de Sade, bearing the number 89 he loved in memory of the French Revolution.
The copies are protected by a slipcase and a navy blue morocco casing made by Jean Bernard Alix. First edition, except for "Du cote de chez Swann", which had been published by Grasset, in 1913.

First edition of the “Mystérieux correspondant et autres nouvelles inédites” • Marcel Proust

This is the original edition on large paper bearing number 1 of this collection of unpublished texts by young Marcel Proust, edited by Professor Luc Fraisse. Among the one hundred and fifteen copies of the first edition of the original edition, one hundred were printed on Vélin Rivoli Blanc numbered from 1 to 100 and entirely reserved for the Société des Hôtels Littéraires. The binding is signed by Nobuko Kiyomiya, a great figure in contemporary bookbinding.

Glass Vase, Jug and Wheat • David Hockney

Making the passage of time felt in painting has always been one of the major preoccupations of the artist, an admireror of Marcel Proust.

Granville, sortie du port • Gaston Roullet

Gaston Roullet (1847 - 1925) was discovered in 1874 at the Salon des artistes français with a watercolour entitled "Entrée du port de Dieppe" (Entering the Port in Dieppe). He developed the Norman theme at this time with views of Fécamp, or here of Granville.

In 1885, he was appointed painter to the Navy and the Colonial Departments, and took part in the colonial military campaigns to draw landscapes and cultures encountered during these expeditions. He later painted again many views of the Breton and Norman coasts.

Houlgate at Low Tide • René-Xavier Prinet

Rene-Xavier Prinet drew sketches in Cabourg, painting his canvases more in his studios in Paris or Bourbonne-les-Bains. This is the first time this study has been presented in a public institution's exhibition.

Intérieur, Tristan Klingsor

Poet, musician, painter and essayist, Tristan Klingsor was the pseudonym of Arthur Léon Leclère (1866-1966) who embodied the Renaissance man. He was a multidisciplinary, honest man of the classical age and a polymorphic artist who left a rich legacy of poems, paintings, musical compositions.

Japanese paper cut

Paper cut (katagami) offered by Federico de Madrazo to Reynalodo Hahn on his return from his trip to Japan in 1907.

Jeanne Prinet lisant sur un canapé • René-Xavier Prinet

"Cabourg remains among the happiest times of my life of my life, thank you both."Marguerite Desvallières wrote in 1915 to her friend Jeanne Prinet.

Jeune fille lisant • Alfred Smith

Alfred Smith was a painter first influenced by a naturalist, delicate aesthetic close to Corot, where portraits and landscapes were the main subjects. He painted simple and solid compositions, very well drawn and very balanced.
In his career, Smith turned Impressionism around without really entering the current but by adopting certain techniques and themes of the current then avant-garde. "To be a naturalist is to love, to see, to understand and to try to make live", said the master naturalist Alfred-Philippe Roll when defining naturalism. Alfred Smith produced portraits set in open air landscapes, ultimately imposing a personal style that is a kind of synthesis of Naturalism and Impressionism. Although he painted many landscapes alone, his portraits were an essential genre for the artist who declared in 1930 that "a painter is not complete if he is only a landscape painter". For Smith, the study of nature remained linked to the study of human nature.
Here, this « Jeune fille lisant » that the painter gave to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen in 1911 evokes the theme of reading, which Marcel Proust dissected so well in his essay On Reading: "There are perhaps no days of our childhood that we have lived so fully as those we thought we were leaving without living them, those we spent with a favorite book".

L’Attente • Philippe Ernest Zacharie

Philippe Ernest Zacharie (1849-1915) lived and painted in Rouen. After having lost all his artwork in a fire in 1884, he created the second portion of his art, standing out for his great mastery of portraits and the delicate representation of female figures. His career ended prematurely, but in 1930, the Musée de Rouen created an exhibition dedicated to him with the title “Le Peintre rouennais Philippe Zacharie” (“The Rouen Painter Philippe Zacharie”).

La Convalescente • Adolphe Gustave Binet

A Calvados-born painter, Adolphe Binet was a fine representative of the Normandy School of painting
during the Impressionist period.

La femme à l’ombrelle bleue • René-Xavier Prinet

In Cabourg, René-Xavier Prinet observed and sketched the society of the Belle Époque on holiday, including its elegant women protected by their parasols and its horseback riders on the beach.

La lettre • Gustave de Jonghe

Throughout his career, De Jonghe painted "the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie" in refined interiors with his talent of observation and his pictorial virtuosity.

La mer • Félix Vallotton

The Japanese inspiration that was very fashionable during this period is fully apparent in this work with its very contemporary sobriety.

La nounou noire • René-Xavier Prinet

René-Xavier Prinet came from a privileged background. His father, Henry Prinet, first a Parisian magistrate then an imperial prosecutor and investigating judge, was also an amateur painter in his spare time. His mother, Fanny Mabile, was a descendant of the painter Francois-Hubert Drouais (1727-1775). Coming from a private collection, this painting is being presented in a public institution for the very first time.

La pêcheuse de crevettes à Cabourg (étude) • René-Xavier Prinet

"This is the last fishermen's camp, like all the fishermen who have lived since the beginning of the world, in front of the eternal kingdom of the fogs of the sea and the shadows." Marcel Proust, « Swann's Way ».
This is the first time this study has been presented in a public institution's exhibition.

La plage à marée haute • René-Xavier Prinet

Prinet observed and sketched the society of the Belle Époque on holiday, its elegant women protected by their parasols, its riders on the beach. He drew sketches and sketches, painting his canvases in his studios in Paris or Bourbonne-les-Bains, then exhibited them at the Georges Petit gallery.

La Plage de Cabourg • René Xavier Prinet

René-Xavier Prinet is undoubtedly, with Jacques-Émile Blanche, the other great “Proustian” painter, in the sense that both artists attempted to do in painting what Proust succeeded doing in literature: transcend a world lost in the birth of a new style. “A very accomplished artist, successor to Fantin-Latour in a certain kind of portraits of family intimacy, he represents what has been called the French moderation," Jacques-Émile Blanche wrote of René-Xavier Prinet.
The Prinet’s holiday home, the Double-Six, is situated on the Cabourg promenade along the sea, a few meters from the Grand Hotel. In Cabourg, René-Xavier Prinet observed and depicted the society of the Belle Époque (Edwardian Era) on holiday, the elegant women protected by their umbrellas, the horse riders on the beach.
He drew drafts and sketches, painting his canvases rather in his workshops in Paris or in Bourbonne-les-Bains, then he exhibited them in the Galerie Georges Petit. Following in the footsteps of Eugène Boudin who well represented the touristic beaches of Trouville and Deauville around 1860, but more influenced by the Impressionists, René-Xavier Prinet painted numerous sceneries of the bustling Cabourg beaches, where just like many impressionist paintings, these numerous scenes of the bustling Cabourg beaches feature people with undefined traits in order to make them more relatable to an audience. His painting Plage de Cabourg created in 1910, kept at the Musée d’Orsay, was exhibited in Paris the same year at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. There are several variations on this theme.

Le Bar en gelée à la Russe • Jacques-Émile Blanche

“A fish cooked in wine was brought in on a long earthenware dish, on which, as it stood out in relief on a bed of bluish herbs, unbreakable now but still contorted from having been dropped alive into boiling water, surrounded by a circle of satellite creatures in their shells, crabs, shrimps and mussels, it had the appearance of being part of a ceramic design by Bernard Palissy,” noted Marcel Proust in « The Guermantes Way ».
Jacques-Émile Blanche painted still-life paintings throughout his entire career. This genre had symbolic importance to him: it was through the representation of a brioche that he was "enthroned" as a painter by his master Édouard Manet as he recalls in his memoir « La Pêche aux souvenirs ». “I saw my dear Manet again.,” Blanche states. “It was in '82. The year before, I had painted the brioche at his house, which in his eyes made me a painter."
Blanche considered still-life a very noble genre. It was the both the defense and the proof for mastery of the painter’s profession, thus following the tradition of French artist Jean Siméon Chardin, and before that of Flemish painters. His first still-life paintings with fish were made in Dieppe around 1878. In « La Pêche aux Souvenirs », Blanche explains: “Corot confers his nobility on a lumberjack's hut, Chardin on a pie, Cézanne on a tea towel and apples in a coarse, twisted fruit bowl. The motif proposed, the artist transposed and marked reality with his seal. In these two paintings presented in our exhibition, Blanche offers us a demonstration of his technical virtuosity, notably through the restitution of light and its reflections.

Le Champagne • Gaston de La Touche

Gaston La Touche was known as the "true son of Watteau" for the influence 18th century French artists that can be found in his painting. Famous for his paintings that revisit a glorious past, Gaston Latouche was considered at his death as one of the masters of decorative painting. His palette is bright with very luminous colors, which, at the same time, links this singular figure of the art of his time to modern painters. His favorite subject was the elegant social life he frequented. He liked to observe and fix the attitudes of the guests at receptions and concerts. In his scenes of intimacy such as this Champagne, La Touche creates a subtle harmony, and a poetic atmosphere tinged with a certain nostalgia for a time already lost.

Le Hameau des Vignes à Ouezy (Calvados) • Jules Louis Rame

Jules-Louis Rame, a friend of Berlioz and Rodin, lived and worked most of his life in the Calvados region where he immortalized the landscapes through his paintings.

Le Jeune fils du peintre Helleu • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Inspiration for the Proust’s character Elstir in « In Search of Lost Time », Paul César Helleu and his family spent their summers at the Villa Saint-Augustin in Benerville.
This portrait of the little Jean Helleu was painted in Dieppe in 1897. The boy is depicted wearing traditional vacation clothing. Jacques-Émile Blanche frequented the Helleu family just as he did Marcel Proust, in a Normandy that was the summer spot for the French intellectual elite. Blanche and Helleu were reunited by their common admiration for James Whistler and John Sargent, and they frequented the same artistic circles. They even traveled to London together in 1882 in the company of Auguste Rodin and Henri Gervex. The two often met up in Paris or Dieppe. This specific painting bears witness to Blanche’s warmer palette, notably in the shadows that contrast with his pastels in the cold-toned shadows. He also used oil paint in order to give an effect of transparency.

Le Réveil • René-Xavier Prinet

Painter of interiors, Rene-Xavier Prinet sought to capture the latent poetry of the everyday things of life, as pictured here with the rising of a young girl in flowers.

Les Régates à Henley • Jacques-Émile Blanche

The Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames was a very important sporting and social event during the Belle Époque. The amateur swimmer race took place in early July in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. The event first took place in 1839. Placed under the patronage of Prince Albert in 1851, the competition was systematically sponsored by the Royal Family after his death. The British passion for rowing made it a major social event, as well as one of the highlights of the social season.
Blanche devoted several canvases to the event which, for the most part, seem to have been executed around 1910. It was a time when he was particularly interested in the outdoors, particularly by confronting the impressionist paintings of 1870s. When Blanche approached this repertoire, the sport of rowing referred to a pictorial history closely associated with that of the “new painting.” We know the importance of canoeing scenes from the beginnings of Impressionism. at Monet, Renoir or Caillebotte, who are moreover attached to portraying recreational practices rather than the world of competition. Sisley, on the other hand, had been particularly sensitive to the animation which surrounded the regattas in England, to the point of devoting a large series of paintings to the rowing races of Molesey, not far from Hampton Court, painted during his stay in the summer 1874.
Blanche was less interested in the swimmers in action than in the side of the regatta, with her groups of elegant people dressed in light colors, represented in an open air light that the play of reflections makes particularly capricious. As in his scenes inspired by cricket or horse racing, he also saw a very typical moment of English social life.

Lucie Esnault • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Daughter of a locksmith in Auteuil, Jacques-Émile Blanche regularly has Lucie Esnault model for portraits. His portraits transcribed the impressions of the painter's world. Dressed in worldly costumes by the artist, the young girl, a sort of muse, thus becomes a possible incarnation of the Proustian flowering girls. Blanche had a wardrobe of costumes for his models such as Lucie Esnault or Désirée Manfred. His portraits were not only commissioned from bourgeois citizens who wanted their image in their living room, but also a medium to testify of a time, of this Belle Époque of which Blanche is a privileged witness.

Madame La Lyre sur la plage de Carteret • Adolphe La Lyre

After discovering the Normandy region in 1872, Adolphe La Lyre (1848-1933) settled in Carteret in the Cotentin peninsula. La Lyre, a pupil of Jean-Jacques Henner, specialized in painting women and notably built a villa called the "castle of the sirens," which was the inspiration for much of his painted work.

Marcel Proust : 1er octobre 1891, Trouville • Jacques-Émile Blanche

The first portrait produced by his friend Jacques-Émile Blanche, this sketch depicting Marcel Proust is executed in the villa Les Frémonts at their friends Baignères.

Marcel Proust avec Robert de Flers et Lucien Daudet • Anonyme

Marcel Proust poses here with two of his childhood best friends, Robert de Flers (another model of the character Robert de Saint-Loup) and Lucien Daudet.

Men’s swimsuit

Moi par moi • Jacques-Émile Blanche

"Jacques Blanche was so much himself like Swann's Way that, coming out of a chapter of the book
I thought I was entering, on the rue du Docteur Blanche, into the next living part of the book," said François Mauriac, undoubtedly the finest and most accurate observer of his time.
Jacques-Émile Blanche was as much of a dandy as Marcel Proust, but he shared with his novelist friend above all the concern to cultivate the art of living for art. It is clear from his correspondence and diary that art was the fundamental subject of Blanche's life, just as it was in the life and work of Marcel Proust. In 1914, Blanche was the first to write a favorable review of the first volume of Proust's novel, Swann's Way, perceiving the literary genius of this text better than anyone else.

Morceau de saumon dans un plat d’argent • Jacques-Émile Blanche

It was Édouard Manet that taught Jacques-Émile Blanche, his friend and protégé, the practice of still-life painting, considered the perfect exercise for measuring the artistic talent of a painter. Blanche painted many still-life paintings, notably during his visits in his first family vacation home in Dieppe. These still-life paintings depicting meals are also precious witnesses to the art of dining during the Belle Époque.

Opera mantle • Jacques Doucet

During the Belle Époque, Maison Doucet was one of the must-see Parisian haute couture houses. Jacques Doucet counts among his rich clientele such personalities as Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane or the Belle Otero. This richly adorned opera mantle is a fine example of the couturier's craftsmanship.
Worn by the Marquise d'Aligre, this mantelet inspires Marcel Proust who describes it in "Sodom et Gomorrhe" when worn by Madame de Cambremer.

Pair of Japanese vases

This pair of vases, donated to the Guimet Museum by Madame Selma Bieck, could be the work of Toukamoto Keisuke. The motif of the carp-dragon evokes the city of Nagoya.

Paysage d’automne • Charles Fréchon

As an important figure of the artistic life in Rouen during the Belle Époque, Charles Fréchon offered another vision of Impressionist painting.

Petit pêcheur normand • Alphonse Osbert

Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939) was a painter from the Symbolist movement. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, where his classmate was Georges Seurat, Alphonse Osbert began his work influenced by Léon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon. He painted naturalistic canvases in a post-Barbizon style in the 1880s. He then met Maurice Denis and Puvis de Chavannes, whose overtly decorative aesthetic and symbolist expression influenced him greatly. He was also close to the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Passionate about the English Channel and its culture, Osbert painted contemplative seaside scenes, such as this Little Norman Fisherman, which seems to meditate in an idyllic light. The Musée d'Orsay holds several hundred works (paintings and sketches) bequeathed to the State by the painter's daughter in 1992.

Plage de Dieppe, face au Casino • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Dieppe, city of painters since Delacroix, had provided motives to Corot, Daubigny, I would say all the painters of the middle of the 19th century, then to Boudin and Vollon," wrote Jacques-Émile Blanche in his memoirs entitled « La Pêche aux souvenirs ».
Dieppe is a city he knew like the back of his hand. The painter spent the vacations of his youth there. Every summer from 1872 to the death of his mother in 1895, Jacques-Émile Blanche stayed in the cottage built at Bas-Fort Blanc, facing the sea—the neighborhood of painters and musicians from Paris on vacation in Dieppe. Renoir and Degas frequented the house as neighbors, as well as the Halévy brothers (friends of Marcel Proust).
Blanche published a tribute to the city in 1927 with his essay "Dieppe". At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Dieppe was an exclusive resort frequented by the most well-known people of Paris: Princess Mathilde, Robert de Montesquiou, the Prince of Polignac, Count Greffulhe...

Portrait d’Eugène Rouart • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Eugène Rouart was a French politician that came from a family of artists. He was friends with André Gide, who inspired the « L’École des femmes » trilogy.

Portrait de Claude Debussy • Marcel Baschet

The famous musician Claude Debussy sojourned in Normandy during the summers, notably in Houlgate. His opera, « Pelléas et Mélisande », is cited multiple times in the book « Soddom and Gomorrah », the fourth volume of Marcel Proust’s « In Search of Lost Time ».

Portrait de femme en robe mouchetée • Henry Caro-Delvaille

Through his paintings, Henry Caro-Delvaille immortalized his bourgeois clients of the Belle Époque. His work thus created a sort of photograph of a certain society from between two centuries, which coincides in part, in its themes and customs, with the society described by Marcel Proust in « In Search of Lost Time ».

Portrait de Jacques-Émile Blanche • Lucien Simon

Lucien Simon, friend of Jacques-Émile Blanche and René-Xavier Prinet, was a very successful painter. Though posterity has not been very favorable to Lucien Simon's work, he nevertheless left us with one of the most expressive portraits of Jacques-Émile Blanche. Painted here at age 42, Jacques-Émile Blanche was a central figure in artistic and literary life (he published about 50 books) of the Belle Époque. He was Norman to his core and Proustian in his imagination.
This portrait was painted in 1903 and exhibited the following year at the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-Arts. Blanche himself even painted a portrait of his friend Lucien Simon, testifying to the friendship that united them. In fact, the two colleagues had known each other since the beginning of the 1890s, when they left the Salon des Artistes Français to join the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Born the same year, they were part of that generation of artists emblematic of the Georges Petit gallery exhibitions. Simon and Blanche both received a gold medal at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris. They also taught together at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, from 1906, and both benefited from an exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1912. This closeness in their artistic career was coupled with real personal affinities.

Portrait de Madame Faure • François Flameng

Very appreciated by the public, Francois Flameng made portraits of important figures, including a famous portrait of French novelist Victor Hugo.

Portrait de Madame Geneviève Straus • Anonyme

Friend of Marcel Proust and patron of the arts, Madame Straus was one of the models for the character
Oriane de Guermantes in « In Search of Lost Time ».

Portrait de Madame Helleu • Paul-César Helleu

Paul César Helleu married Alice Guérin after having her model for his portraits. Their friend Robert de Montesquiou praised ""the multiform Alice whose pink hair illuminates with its reflection so many copper mirrors." She played a central role in Helleu's life and career and became the muse and model for many of his masterpieces.

Portrait de Marcel Proust • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Born in the same Auteuil as Jacques-Émile Blanche, Marcel Proust embodies–along with his painter friend–a society that truly dedicates itself above all to the art of living. art of living. Jacques-Émile Blanche recognized a little bit of his own youth in the face of this young writer, during a time when photography had not yet compromised Blanche’s ambitions as a socialite portrait painter, and when he could not have even imagined a terrible war that would make the pleasures and the days of this particular society of the Belle Époque (Edwardian Era) disappear–in other words his reason for living and the subject of his work.

He first drew a portrait of the young Marcel Proust in October 1891 in Trouville, during a trip to Normandy when the two friends met. This pencil drawing, conserved in the National Library of France, no doubt gave rise to the ideas of the painted portrait produced the following summer, but it nevertheless remains a distinct work in and of itself. Marcel Proust told the origin of this first portrait : “A pencil sketch that preceded my oil portrait was made before dinner, in Trouville, in the admirable Frémonts and where the Marquise de Gallifet, first cousin of the mistress, ascended from the manor of Roches or the Persian villa, with the Princess of Sagan, both in their elegance almost indescribable today/nowadays, former beauties of the [Second] Empire.”
The Frémonts, where Marcel Proust sojourned, were during the summer of 1891 the family residence of his friend Arthur Baignères and served as a model for the house La Raspelière in his novel « In Search of Lost Time ».

In June 1892, Marcel Proust, then a political science and law student, settled down once again on a Saturday morning in Jacques-Émile Blanche’s studio, in the family hotel rue de Docteur-Blanche. He recounts these sessions, followed by lunches with the painter's parents, in his preface to Jacques-Émile Blanche's essay From David to Degas.
The correspondence between Marcel Proust and Jacques-Émile Blanche shows the happiness that the young man feels in being portrayed by the one he calls “My painter!” Blanche, meanwhile, is less satisfied with this portrait that was initially full-length. “The appalling study I painted of him was very similar; I had torn that canvas,” he says. He would have cut the canvas to focus on the bust of this young Marcel whom he perceives, visionary above all, as “the disturbing signs of the pure artist.” The portrait of Proust painted by Blanche is an exclusive work in every sense of the word. Marcel liked this image as a sort of mirror of his youth– he never got rid of it. There would be no other portrait painted of him in his lifetime, and he refused at least one other portrait proposal by this same Blanche. Proust was even reluctant to share this image with its author and attributes it to Antonio de La Gándara, when he mentions it in Jean Santeuil. If the painting was exhibited in 1893 at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars amongst a dozen canvases by Blanche, it was not shown to the public until 1922 in the “Cent portraits” exhibition at the Center of the Interallied Union, and Proust only allowed this image to be published once during his lifetime, in 1920, to illustrate the cover of a deluxe edition of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.

Portrait de Paul Baignieres • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Paul-Louis Baignères (1869-1945), a young painter from a good family, a pupil of Léon Bonnat and Henri Gervex, was a friend of Jacques-Émile Blanche and of Marcel Proust, who dedicated one of his studies for La Revue Blanche in 1893 to him.
He welcomed the writer on holiday in 1891 in the family villa Les Frémonts, in Trouville. It was during this stay that Marcel Proust had his first portrait drawn by Blanche, a drawing dated 1st October 1891. The same year, the painter painted this portrait of his young colleague. It is striking to see in this painting the characteristic features of Blanche's style at that time (in particular the black background) which are to be found in the painted portrait of Marcel Proust done the following year.

Portrait de Pierre Loüys • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Friend of Marcel Proust in his youth, Pierre Louys cultivated, like Proust, a certain taste of the world and a passion for writing. Poet and novelist of love and sensuality, he is notably the author of « La Femme et le pantin » or « Les chansons de Bilitis ».

Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt • Paul Nadar

The most famous actress of her time, Sarah Bernhardt was adored by Marcel Proust. She inspired in part the character of La Berma in « In Search of Lost Time », where the narrator says "his joy of going to hear the Berma in Phedre, whose name alone illuminates the actress with its prestige."

Rouleaux de vagues à Cabourg • René-Xavier Prinet

"I had no greater desire than to see a storm on the sea, not so much as a beautiful spectacle than as a moment revealed of the real life of nature." Marcel Proust, « Swann's Way ».

Salle à manger du clos Saint-Jean • René-Xavier Prinet

The Clos Saint-Jean is the Parisian property of the Prinet family, who shared their life between Paris, Bourbonne-les-bains and Cabourg.

Sous-bois en hiver • Charles Fréchon

Charles Fréchon was a painter of the seasons and liked to work in the open air like the Impressionists. He was skilled in capturing all the nuances of the Normandy countryside which fascinated him throughout his career, and he was strongly marked by Normandy and the deep and complex beauty of its nature.

Sur la plage, Dieppe • Paul-César Helleu

Among the friends of Marcel Proust, the Halevys have a property in Dieppe, as do Jacques-Émile Blanche, Madeleine Lemaire or the Greffulhe.

Un bel après-midi • Ferdinand Heilbuth

Ferdinand Heilbuth (1826-1889), a French painter of German origin, developed in the latter part of his career a rustic, rural style of painting, befriending Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet and also Edouard Manet. He frequented the "guinguettes" on the banks of the Seine and developed a lighter palette, dialoguing with the impressionist aesthetic without really penetrating it, in order to continue to observe and retranscribe scenes of life. His success was very important in this first part of what would later be called the "Belle Époque" a period that was the setting for the life of the young Marcel Proust, author of « In Search of Lost Time ».

Varengeville, la cabane des douaniers • Jean-Francis Auburtin

In the manner of a French Hokusai, Auburtin practiced gouache in virtuoso, painting on paper the most picturesque views of the Normandy coast.

Vase de fleurs • Henri Fantin-Latour

One of Henri Fantin-Latour’s favorite motifs in his art was flowers, which provided him material for pictorial experimentation and thus great commercial success.
Still-life paintings, a very unpopular genre of art in the second half of the 20th century, was nevertheless a popular and reputed genre during the Belle Époque. Still-life was practiced mainly by the biggest painters, in the tradition of the classical masters. It is worth noting that still-life paintings have come back into style amongst the most contemporary artists, such as Michel Paysant and his flower bouquet drawn by a computer program.

Voiliers dans le port de Deauville • Eugène Boudin

At the dawn of the Belle Epoque (Edwardian Era), Eugène Boudin made Normandy the fundamental subject of his landscape paintings, a minor genre at the time which was experiencing a sort of revival et perhaps even its golden age.
On the beaches, Eugène Boudin observed the sea always similar and always starting over, the spectacle of the sky in paintings that Charles Baudelaire described as “meteorological beauties:” He also painted boats, fishermen, and the “flowering” bourgeoisie who, since 1860, had tasted the pleasures of the birth of seaside tourism in Deauville and Trouville.
His works were greatly successful amongst the summer visitors: “We love my little women on the beach, and some claim that there is even an opportunity to capitalize on,” rejoiced the painter in 1863. Boudin also painted Proustian visions of landscapes where the earth, sky and sea seem to blend, “where the sea enters the land, where the land is already sea,” as Marcel Proust wrote. It is in this way that Proust introduces Elstir’s character to Balbec, whose seascapes admired by the narrator of « In Search of Lost Time » make up visual metaphors that transform the sea into land and land into sea. In his painting of the harbour of Carquethuit, Elstir uses "for the small town only marine terms, and only urban terms for the sea", and "accustoms the eyes not to recognize a fixed border, an absolute demarcation, between the land and the ocean.” Eugène Boudin, whom Claude Monet considered his master, foreshadowed the Impressionist Movement.

Vue de L’Église de Dives-sur-Mer • René-Xavier Prinet

The church of Dives-sur-Mer is one of the sources of inspiration for Marcel Proust's depiction of the church in Balbec.

Women’s bathing suit

Silent movie

Robe • Jacques Doucet

In 1875, Jacques Doucet (1853-1929) founded one of the first haute couture houses in the Rue de la Paix, which quickly became an essential part of Parisian fashion. From 1880 to the 1920s, he dressed the women of high society as well as the most prominent actresses and socialites. Réjane, La Belle Otero and Sarah Bernhardt were among his clients, seduced by the refined cut and impeccable construction of his clothes, their subtle shades and precious ornamentation. Doucet is quoted in "In Search of Lost Time" by Proust as one of the few, according to Elstir, to design "women's fashions for automobiles", i.e. modern outfits. A bibliophile and collector, Doucet sponsored many artists.

Farawell • Vittorio-Matteo Corcos

This portrait of a beautiful young woman, framed in close-up, shows a mysterious figure who seems to be saying goodbye to a boat, "Farawell" meaning "Farewell", which we can guess from the smoke of the chimney painted just above the horizon.
Richly dressed in fabric and lace - the black lace mittens highlighting the whiteness of her skin - and wearing a flowery hat, this woman reflects the 19th century bourgeoisie enjoying the seaside holiday.

A virtuoso Italian portraitist, Vittorio Corcos (1859-1933) honoured commissions from personalities such as the German Emperor William II, before painting a series of assertive and "independent" women who have greatly seduced and sometimes shocked by their ambiguity and mystery.

Portrait de Pierre Bracquemond enfant • Marie Bracquemond

French painter, Marie Bracquemond (1840 - 1916) is one of the great female figures of Impressionism along with Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, though often overshadowed by her husband, the painter Felix Bracquemond.
Marie Bracquemond began her career with an artistic style close to Ingres. As a student of Ingres, she noted that the artist had "little regard for women artists [...]. Because he doubted the courage and perseverance of women in the field of painting [...] he only entrusted them with paintings of flowers, fruit, still lifes, portraits or genre scenes."
In 1870 she gave birth to a son, Pierre, who was to become a painter and decorator, and whom she portrays here at the age of eight. In this portrait of her only son, one can sense the inspiration of Alfred Stevens, whom she greatly admired.

Portrait de Lucienne Bréval • Eugène Carrière

Carrière's paintings attest to a taste for the elusive. A painting by Carrière does not want to be beautiful but strong. The artist favours light over colour. The portrait of Lucienne Bréval, Debussy's lyrical interpreter, seems to float in a stream of musical waves, that of Henri Rochefort is marked by the determination, even the obstinacy of the polemicist.
Eugène Carrière (1849 - 1906), a friend of Rodin, undeniably had an aura, he was a sort of master thinker for many young artists and the history of art remains unfair to him, despite courageous attempts to re-evaluate his work.

Coin du parc, Amfreville • Edouard Vuillard

A great admirer of the classics such as Vermeer, Watteau and Chardin, Edouard Vuillard (1868 - 1940) developed a taste for realistic still lifes and loved to paint interior scenes. His work is characterised by a nuanced search for colour ranges, a balance between light and dark, arabesque lines and decorative motifs inspired by Japanese prints.

In 1889, he joined a small group of artists with Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard, the Nabis. For these artists, it was a question of freeing themselves from all academic conventions and in particular from the faithful reproduction of nature or the scene observed. Around 1900, Édouard Vuillard's art evolved under the influence of Claude Monet, with canvases that were more open to sunlight and brighter colours. Using simplified motifs and large flat areas of colour, the artist created a composition of horizontals and verticals, freeing himself from perspective, but still giving an impression of depth with neutral tones. The park of his house in Amfreville (Calvados) inspired him for many works.

Rose dans une coupe • Henri Fantin-Latour

At the end of the 19th century, the still life was still considered a minor genre, despite the achievements of Courbet, Manet and even Delacroix. Nevertheless, almost all painters practised it according to their own styles and influences, showing a growing interest in everyday objects and flowers without pomp and circumstance.
From his early days in the 1860s, Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) painted bouquets, which were very popular with his English clientele and became his main source of income.
Still life was an excellent way for Fantin-Latour to perfect his art, to study the relationship between tones and colours. With a keen sense of composition, Fantin-Latour played on the repetition of motifs from one painting to the next (in total we count 160 floral compositions by the artist), on a skilful compromise between balance and imbalance.
This still life "rose in a bowl" bears witness to the artist's sense of observation, capable of rendering colours and textures in all their variety. If the background is neglected, the light is on the other hand treated with the greatest subtlety. Flowers imposed themselves on Henri Fantin-Latour as a favourite motif, which offered him material for pictorial experimentation and great commercial success.
The still life, a genre despised during the second half of the 20th century, was however, during the Belle Époque, a genre highly prized and recognised by the greatest painters, in the tradition of the classical masters. It should be noted that the genre is coming back into fashion today in the most contemporary art, if we think in particular of the bouquets of flowers drawn by a computer program of the pioneer artist Michel Paysant.

Assiette parlante “Bains de mer III” • Hippolyte Boulenger

In 1863, Hippolyte Boulenger (1836-1892), nephew of Louis-Xavier Boulenger and son of Adolphe Boulenger, became the director of the family company Faïenceries de Choisy-le-Roi, famous for its earthenware creations for the tableware industry, sold in France and all over the world, but also for its ceramics such as the white tiles that decorate the Parisian underground.
This set of plates has the theme of sea bathing. It is with humour that the pleasures of the beach are depicted, as in the image of this woman telling her child that "the sea is like soup, it's always colder on the shore."

Étude pour le portrait de la comtesse Anna de Noailles • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Jacques-Émile Blanche immortalised the great writers and artists of his time. His portraits are a true cartography of the artistic and social life of the Belle Époque. This study reveals the importance the artist placed on the attitude of his models as well as on their gaze. The artist inherited from his father an interest in psychological perception: ""To tear out the secret of a soul [...], is this not the intoxication of the psychologist, of the moralist as well as of the portrait painter?"" Born Princess Bibesco Bassaraba de Brancovan, Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) was an important poetess and a great friend of Marcel Proust, whom she met in 1893. This painting is the second study for the portrait by Jacques-Émile Blanche.

Étude pour le portrait de Raymond Radiguet • Jacques-Émile Blanche

"Phenomenon of French letters", according to Jean Cocteau, the writer Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923) had a brilliant yet short career, dying at 20. He started working in journalism at the age of 15 and at a very young age met artists such as Picasso, Modigliani, Max Jacob and above all Jean Cocteau, who was like his mentor.
His career began at 17 with "Le Diable au corps," the story of a young woman who takes advantage of her husband's departure to have an affair with a young teenager. This story scandalised as much as it seduced.
His next novel, "Le Bal du comte d'Orgel", a chaste love story, was published posthumously. His writing is of high quality, sober and measured, and is praised by the critics.

Boats in Etretat (Nabi style) • Jean-Francis Auburtin

This work marks a "Nabi" turn in Auburtin's style, which breaks with his more impressionistic work. The pronounced colors of this gouache are in flat tints, and do not seek relief or details. Auburtin is part of the "pictorial synthesis" defined by the Nabis painters.

Étretat, Downstream Door – Jean-Francis Auburtin

A fellow student of André Gide and Pierre Louÿs at the Alsatian school in Paris, Jean-Francis Auburtin trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris but belonged to the generation of painters influenced by impressionist painting, Japanese art and the symbolist movement. As an admirer of Claude Monet, he followed in his footsteps to Normand, where he painted the cliffs of Étretat, Pourville and Varengeville, where he set up his studio in 1907.
This painting of the downstream door contains all the monumental power that the painter confers on the sea, the sky, the cliffs and the clouds in his pictorial experiments around the seascape.

Handwritten Letter – Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust stayed at the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg as soon as it opened in 1907, and for five summers he spent most of his days writing in his room, going from his cathedral novel to his abundant correspondence.

Hen and Child in the Field – Durst

Auguste Durst (1842-1930) shared his life between Puteaux and Normandy. Fascinated by the life and landscapes of the Normandy countryside, the naturalist painter often stayed in the Dieppe region from which he brought back numerous sketches and studies.

Jeune fille à la harpe • Jacques-Émile Blanche

As a painter, writer, and a homme du monde, Jacques-Émile Blanche was also a virtuoso musician and a friend of Claude Debussy in particular.

This painting illustrates his sublime pastel technique, undoubtedly the artistic medium in which he excelled the most, and which he used throughout his career, particularly in his portraits of women. Given the fragility of these works, loans for exhibitions are rare.

La Famille Capelle • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) was the painter par excellence of the artistic, intellectual and social circles of the late 19th century. In 1919 he produced this intimate study of four members of the Capelle family.

La modiste • René-Xavier Prinet

Trained by Louis-Charles Timbal and Jean-Léon Jérôme, René-Xavier Prinet (1861-1946) took part at the end of the 19th century in the creation of the "Black Band" or group of "Nubians"; a group of artists also frequented by Jacques-Emile Blanche, who differed from the light palettes of the Impressionists and the flamboyant ones of the Fauves. As part of this network of faithful friends, René-Xavier Prinet experimented with a palette of dark tones and compositions marked by contrasts between light and shadowy areas.

In the "Modiste," the range of blacks, greys and beiges is very refined and contributes to the extreme simplification of the composition. The turquoise hat box, the white collar of the bodice and the bright yellow of the hat are the only brightly coloured elements and attract all the light in the scene. This light guides the eye to the young woman's face and to her gesture hanging on the door handle, thus contributing to the mysterious character of the work, as a metaphor for waiting.

La plage (étude) • René-Xavier Prinet

"A very sure draughtsman, successor to Fantin-Latour in a certain genre of portraits of family intimacy, he represents what has been, he represents what has been called the French measure," writes Jacques-Émile Blanche about René-Xavier Prinet.

This study, presented for the first time in an institutional public exhibition, offers the unique opportunity to compare it with Prinet's most famous painting, "The Beach," kept at the Musée d'Orsay.
By looking at Prinet's drawings, one can better understand the making of his paintings. Prinet first made sketches on the beach, in real time, almost documentary, and then painted his final works in the studio.

Large Display of “À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs” – Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust had a deluxe edition of "À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs" produced, with 51 copies each enriched with a "placard", a collage of manuscript fragments. This rare document comes from one of these copies and allows us to understand the work of palimpsest of the writer, who corrected his text endlessly.

Le baiser • Auguste Toulmouche

Auguste Toulmouche (1829-1890), cousin by marriage of Claude Monet, led him in his early apprenticeship in Paris and was one of the most famous painters of the Second Empire.

At the beginning of his career in 1850, he painted genre pictures inspired by antiquity and joined the "Neo-Greek Group." However, he soon abandoned this style and turned to the contemporary world, influenced by the neo-classicism of his teacher Charles Gleyre. He was one of the first painters to compose scenes inspired by the bourgeois life of the Second Empire: his paintings depict the interiors of social life and elegant young bourgeois women.

Le Balcon (étude) • René-Xavier Prinet

René-Xavier Prinet develops a narrative painting, which tells the story of a certain society of the Belle Époque and whose works preserve the sensitivity and refinement.

Les enfants Mallet, André et Pascaline • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Born into a wealthy family of doctors, Jacques-Émile Blanche came to painting through collecting. At a very young age, through family connections, he met Manet, whose works he acquired, as well as paintings by Cézanne and Monet. In 1880, at the age of 19, Jacques-Émile Blanche decided to become a painter and took lessons from Henri Gervex, a modern realist. Jean Cocteau saw Blanche as "the only portraitist who bequeaths to us the customs of his time with a sharp post-impressionist talent."

Les Frémonts • Anonyme

The Villa Les Frémonts in Trouville was built in 1869 by the architect Jacques Baumier and his son, pioneers of the neo-Norman architecture. Owned by the Finaly family, who bought it from the Baignières with the help of Marcel Proust, the villa served as a model for the house La Raspelière in "In Search of Lost Time," which is the Verdurin's seaside property where the narrator often goes. Proust himself stayed at Les Frémonts on several occasions, where his first portrait was painted by Jacques-Émile Blanche in 1891.

Madame Helleu lisant debout • Paul-César Helleu

As a painter of the woman of the Belle Époque, Paul César Helleu captured the femininity and elegance
of young women. Alice Guérin, his wife, was one of his favorite models.

Mère et enfant • Paul Leroy

Paul Leroy (1860-1942) began his training in Russia. In 1877 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. An Orientalist painter, he is also known for his writings.

Montre de Marcel Proust

Dating from 1905, this watch belonged to the writer before passing into the hands of Céleste Albaret, his governess and confidante from 1913 to 1922. Céleste Albaret (1891-1984) and her husband Odilon Albaret (1881-1960) played an important role in Marcel Proust's personal life.
Odilon Albaret was a mechanic-driver employed by the car taximeter company Unic, run by Marcel Proust's childhood friend Jacques Bizet, and present in Cabourg, Paris and Monaco. Marcel Proust called on Odilon to travel to Normandy from Cabourg, where he stayed from 1907.
It was in 1913 that Odilon introduced his wife, Céleste Albaret, to the writer. Céleste was at the writer's service and made herself indispensable to him, serving as his housekeeper and secretary and helping him with the writing of ""À la recherche du temps perdu"".
Subsequently, in 1924, Céleste and Odilon Albaret bought a hotel on rue des Canettes in Paris. Then, after the death of her husband, Céleste took charge of Maurice Ravel's house in Montfort-l'Amaury.

Needle of Etretat, View on the Needle – Jean-Francis Auburtin

As a great painter of seascapes, Auburtin was a lover of nature. He preferred gouache for its opaque and matte effects.
In the manner of a French Hokusai, Auburtin practiced gouache as a virtuoso, fixing on paper the most picturesque views of the Normandy coast.

Plage • Armand Seguin

Armand Félix Abel Seguin (1869-1903) was a Breton draughtsman and painter. As an impressionist painter, he soon became a follower of the Nabi movement just like Paul Gauguin and Maurice Denis of the école de Pont-Aven, but his graphic expression remains very personal. A friend of Paul Verlaine, Paul Gauguin, Oscar Wilde, Emile Bernard and Paul Sérusier, he lived a bohemian life in the four corners of France, pursuing his vocation as an artist in very precarious conditions. He died at the age of 35.
Today, only 17 paintings by Seguin can be found in the world.

Plage • Gaston de Villers

Gaston Bernheim de Villers (1870-1953) is a Belgian painter and portraitist. He is also known as the founder of the famous Berheim art gallery.

Plage de Dieppe • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) loved to travel, notably in London. As a admirer of Normandy, Blanche frequented the beaches of Dieppe with his parents and he stayed regularly on the Normandy coast, near Deauville.

Poplars in the Mist – Jean Francis Auburtin

Jean-Francis Auburtin (1866-1930) always studied in detail the structure of trees and their movement that fascinated him, and that he translates so well by stylizing their forms to bring out their poetic charge.

Portrait d’André Gide • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Portraits of artists and writers brought Jacques-Émile Blanche fame from the beginning of his career. As a painter-writer, the privileged relationship he had with his models favoured an intuitive apprehension of their personality, rendered without any complacency and sometimes even with a certain cruelty. His art of portraiture, profoundly original, is in this respect far removed from the know-how of a worldly portraitist.

André Gide (1869-1951), a leading figure in Belle Époque literature and publishing, had Gallimard sign an exclusive contract with Marcel Proust in 1916 after initially refusing his manuscript "Du côté de chez Swann" in 1913. Gide, who was born in Normandy on his mother's side, lived in a manor house in La Roque-Baignard.

Portrait d’Elisabeth Van Biema • Paul César Helleu

Élisabeth Van Biema (1878-1949), born Joseph, was the wife of Émile Van Biema, a philosopher who specialized in Emmanuel Kant and Gottfried Leibniz.
Helleu (1859-1927) was one of the artists who best synthesized modern elegance, both in his paintings and in his etchings and drypoints. He depicted with indisputable artistry the gestures of feminine grace in the 20th century, leaving us with unforgettable testimonies of the 1900s and of the society described by Marcel Proust. His worldly effigies and feminine silhouettes are among the most precious images of the Belle Époque. One cannot but admire the sobriety, refinement and discreet elegance of his drawn models, which have often been compared by contemporary critics to the graces of Lancret and Watteau.

Portrait d’une jeune femme sur un canapé • René-Xavier Prinet

An intimate painter, Rene-Xavier Prinet is part of the high-society painting world of the inter-century period, to which he brings the spontaneity and lightness of a pictorial gesture that evokes more than it depicts.

Portrait de Jacques Fontane • Jacques-Émile Blanche

From the beginning, Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) was very interested in children's figures. This portrait of Jacques Fontane (1908-1990) dates back to 1918 and must have been painted in Offranville where, since 1902, the painter rented the manor house of Tôt and where he spent part of the year. The model was ten years old and came from a well-known family. The boy's grandmother (Adrienne de Casabianca), a friend of the painter, is most certainly the dedicatee of the painting.

Portrait de ma mère • Jean-Pierre Laurens

This is a portrait of Madeleine Villemsens (1848-1913), the wife of Jean-Paul Laurence (1838-1921), then the most famous artist in Yport, in the Seine-Maritime region, which was then called "the city of painters." Jean-Paul Laurens was a painter of history and became the president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. It was his son Jean-Pierre (1875-1932) who painted this portrait of his mother in Yport.

Portrait de Madame Legendre • Jules Clairin

Georges Jules Clairin, close friend and admirer of the renowned Sarah Bernhardt, also painted many portraits of the actress.

Portrait de Madame Lemoine (née Léandre) et ses filles • Charles Léandre

Bohemian artist, caricaturist, lithographer and illustrator, Charles Léandre (1862 - 1934) had his studio in Montmartre, a lively place of Parisian nightlife where the bourgeois came to be entertained in music halls and cabarets such as the Chat Noir, frequented by the painter.
Born in Champsecret (Orne), Charles Léandre frequently stayed there. He then devoted himself to portraiture, choosing his models from among the members of his family, as in this female portrait representing his sister Mathilde and his young nieces Jeanne and Madeleine Lemoine, his favorite models.
The treatment is subtle and recalls his initial training with his master Alexandre Cabanel.

Portrait de Mademoiselle Suzette Lemaire • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Suzette Lemaire (1866-1946), a painter herself, was the daughter of Madeleine Lemaire, a great organizer of society parties, one of the inspirers of the character of Madame Verdurin in "In Search of Lost Time".

Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn spent their holidays in the Lemaire's house in Dieppe in the summer of 1896, in the company of Suzette. Coming from a private collection, this painting is presented for the first time in an institutional public exhibition. Pastel is undoubtedly the medium of excellence for Jacques-Émile Blanche, a genre he favoured in the 1880s and then tended to abandon, which makes this painting even more precious.

Portrait de Paul Claudel • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Not needing to sell his paintings as a way to make a living, Jacques-Émile Blanche had the freedom to choose his models, thus creating a gallery of famous faces, bringing back to life the Belle Époque rich in creations.
"I am only a portraitist who tells what he sees (...) my articles, my studies are, like my painted portraits, only creations, the paragraphs or pages of a little story of my time", says Jacques-Émile Blanche.
This portrait is that of Paul Claudel (1868-1955), French playwright, poet and diplomat, member of the Académie française; brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel.
A Catholic writer published by the same NRF as Marcel Proust, the latter was deeply shocked by "Sodom and Gomorrah." He also reproached Marcel Proust in his diary for "depicting actions in slow motion, i.e. literally decomposed, therefore distorted. "

Portrait of Fairy • Jean Francis Auburtin

Jean-Francis Auburtin, a great friend of Rodin, was fascinated (like Rodin) by dance and dancers, whom he frequented and from whom he drew inspiration for a large series of works from 1902 to 1920. To better observe the dancers he painted in pastel tones, Auburtin attended the dance schools of Loie Fuller, an American choreographer living in Paris, muse of the Symbolists, and then of Isidora Duncan in Meudon, another American who revolutionized the practice of dance by returning to the model of the Greek figures. One feels here the memory of the teaching of Puvis de Chavannes, but Auburtin affirms however a personal style.

Portrait présumé de Anna de Noailles • Madeleine Lemaire

Madeleine Lemaire (1845-1928), a famous salonnière, was renowned for the quality of her paintings of flowers. She illustrated Proust's first book "Les Plaisirs et les Jours" with her work.
This portrait shows a young woman sitting on an armchair, the pearly sheen of her skin and the satin of her dress accentuated by the background, a beige hanging with a stylised flower motif. The pose seems spontaneous; playing with her pearl necklace, time seems to be suspended. The model perfectly embodies the feminine fashion of the time: a black satin sheath with a white veil framing the décolleté and a ribbon enhanced with black feathers.

The model's face and piercing gaze recall the features of the poetess Anna de Noailles (1876-1933). At the age of 38, she was at the height of her fame. The publication of her collection of poems "Les vivants et les morts au Mercure de France" on 26 June 1913 marked the height of her success.
This portrait is part of Madeleine Lemaire's last submission to the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1914, at the age of 70.

Promenades (ou Coup de vent) • René-Xavier Prinet

Marcel Proust writes in 1891 his nostalgia of "those years at sea when grandmother and I, melted together, we went against the wind while talking", in Cabourg.

Reynaldo Hahn’s Kodak Bellows Device

Until the writer's death in 1922, Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn continued to see and write to each other. Reynaldo encourages the literary works of his friend and Marcel doesn't miss any of his Parisian concerts.

Rose Blanche allongée • Jacques-Émile Blanche

This portrait is of Rose, wife of Jacques Emile Blanche, lying fully clothed and hooded on a red bed or couch. Rose and Jacques-Émile Blanche stayed every season from 1896 to 1901 at the Château de Tout-la-Ville between Deauville and Pont-L'Évêque, where they received the literary, political and artistic Parisians. The painter Paul Helleu—whose portrait he painted of his son Jean—and André Gide were among the guests. François Mauriac said of Jacques-Émile Blanche: "Nothing can prevent us from having recourse to him, who has captured the illustrious or charming faces of the end of the last century and the first half of this one, the faces, but also the landscapes, the beaches and the gardens of Normandy."

Sail Boats in Port – Paul César Helleu

Paul César Helleu (1859-1927), an artist who befriended Marcel Proust and inspired the character of the painter Elstir, liked to spend summers in Bénerville where he painted in the open air. Influenced by his impressionist friends, his landscapes are luminous.
Helleu's predilection for the sea also concerned boats: as soon as he had the means, he became the tenant, then the happy owner of four successive yachts. If his role as captain on board was limited, his temperament as a marine painter blossomed fully on the English and Norman coasts, which provided him with an abundance of subjects: sailboats and barques, alone or in groups, decked out or not, in regattas or in port, invaded Helleu's imagination.

Small Customs Cabin – Jean-Francis Auburtin

Nicknamed "the symbolist of the sea", Jean-Francis Auburtin settled in Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1907, where he was fascinated by the site and where he was buried. Auburtin painted a series of paintings in the same gorge that Claude Monet frequented and greatly admired.

Souvenir box that belonged to Céleste Albaret

This souvenir box, representing the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg, was bought by Marcel Proust during a stay in the seaside resort. The writer offered it to his housekeeper and confidante Céleste Albaret.

Sur la digue (ou Coup de vent) • René-Xavier Prinet

The Prinet's holiday home, the Double-Six, is located on the promenade of Cabourg along the sea, a few metres from the Grand Hotel de Cabourg. Following in the footsteps of Boudin who depicted the tourist beaches of Trouville and Deauville around 1860, but more influenced by the Impressionists, Prinet painted many lively beach scenes in Cabourg.

The Finaly Family at Frémonts – Anonymous

The Finaly family, bankers living in Paris, acquired the Villa Frémonts, built on the heights of Trouville, with the help of Marcel Proust, a friend of the family.
Without any financial worries at the time when photography was an expensive hobby, the Finaly's devoted themselves to it and produced thousands of pictures representing them in their various seaside activities: at the races, on the boards of Trouville, or during a game of tennis, as is the case for this picture. Taken in the privacy of their home, these pictures are strikingly alive and spontaneous. Marcel Proust, marked by this family, was inspired by some of its members to shape these characters and the villa of Frémonts became in his work the villa of La Raspelière.

The Society of Friends of the French Medal

The "Société des amis de la médaille française," also known as the Belle Époque told by its medals.
List of medals exhibited:

1
Youth, 1899
Young girl in profile (obverse), Iris (reverse)
Jules-Prosper Legastelois
Plaque, 60 x47 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

2
Juno and Psyche, 1899
Juno raising the severed head of Argus (obverse), Psyche seated weeping (reverse)
Ferdinand Levillain
Medal, 50 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

3
Maternity, 1899
Mother breastfeeding her child (obverse), portrait of the artist's daughter Thérèse (reverse)
Alexandre Charpentier
Plaque, 80 x 52mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

4
The toilet, 1899
Woman at her toilet (obverse), mirror and flowering branch in the clouds (reverse)
Louis-Oscar Roty
Plaquette, 68 x 34
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

5
Warrior Music, 1900
Allegory of music (obverse), warrior and Euterpe (reverse)
François-Paul Niclausse
Medal, 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

6
Self-portrait, 1900
Profile of the artist on the left (obverse), cherub sitting on a cloud (reverse)
Jean-Baptiste-Daniel Dupuis
Medal, 50 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

7
Souvenir of the 1900 Exposition, 1900
France welcomes and crowns the genius of the two worlds (obverse), panoramic and aerial view of the exhibition (reverse)
Jules-Edouard Roiné
Plaque, 55 x 68 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

8
Loïe Fuller, 1900
The dancing artist (obverse), interlaced arums (reverse)
Pierre Roche
Medal, 72 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

9
Stag fight, 1900
Stags fighting in the forest (obverse), hinds and fawns in an undergrowth (reverse)
Georges Gardet
Plaque, 58 x 95 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

10
The dance, 1901
Dancing couple (obverse), dancer bowing (reverse)
François-Rupert Carabin
Medal, 50 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

11
Société des amis de la médaille française founded on February 28, 1899, 1901
Men examining a medal (obverse), allegory writing on a tablet (reverse)
Alexandre Charpentier
Plaque, 66 x 72 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

12
The two ages of life, 1901
Minette (obverse), Manette (reverse)
Ovide Yencesse
Medal, 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

13
Here are my jewels, 1901
Mother and her two children (obverse), Landau and toys (reverse)
Henry Nocq
Medal, 52 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

14
Solidarity, 1901
Workers in a forge (obverse), women in an interior (reverse)
Frederic of Vernon
Plaque, 75 x 55 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

15
Amphitrite, 1902
Nymph sitting on a dolphin (obverse), nymph bathing (reverse)
Jules Desbois
Medal, 40 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

16
Cleopatra, 1902
Cleopatra surrounded by Egyptian symbols (obverse), Cleopatra sitting on an elephant (reverse)
Emmanuel Frémiet
Plate, 66 x 84 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

17
Brittany, 1902
Seated Breton woman in an interior (obverse), Calvary in a landscape (reverse)
Charles Dufresne
Medal, 55 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

18
Institution for young blind people, 1902
Women and children sitting outside (obverse), young girl and her guide dog knocking on the door of the institution (reverse)
Hippolyte Lefèbvre
Plaque, 68 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

19
The glyptic, 1902
Two women admiring jewels (obverse), engraver at the bench (reverse)
Georges Dupré
Medal, 65 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

20
Springtime, 1903
Couple of teenagers (obverse), naked girl (reverse)
Louis Dejean
Medal, 60 mm
Silver and bronze, Bronze, struck with a pendulum

21
The lull, 1903
Two men observing the sea (obverse), shipwreck (reverse)
Michel Cazin
Plaque, 65 x 81 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

22
Blacksmiths, 1903
Workers in a forge (obverse), blacksmiths hammering chain links (reverse)
Georges Loiseau-Bailly
Plaque, 49 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

23
The young children, 1903
Mother and child (obverse), round of children (reverse)
Charles Pillet
Plaque, 53 x 65 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

24
The bath, 1903
Naked woman going to bathe (obverse), woman sitting at her toilet (reverse)
Abel Lafleur
Plaque, 71 x 40 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

25
Conservation of forests, 1904
The nymph Phylire (obverse), the centaur Chiron (reverse)
César-Henri Cros
Medal, 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

26
The Harvest, 1904
Peasant woman in her field (obverse), farmer driving his plow (reverse)
Jean-Auguste Dampt
Medal, 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

27
History records the discoveries of archaeology, 1904
Allegorical scene illustrating an archaeological excavation (obverse), Ancient statue in a landscape (reverse)
Alphonse-Eugène Lechevrel
Plaque, 70 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

28
Caresses, 1904
Young child caressing her mother's face (obverse), rose hip in bloom (reverse)
Ovide Yencesse
Medal, 45 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

29
Lion overcoming a bull, 1904
Lion and bull fighting (obverse), Lioness and her cubs (reverse)
Victor Peter
Medal, 65 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

30
The worker's dream, 1905

Naked old man sitting in a landscape (obverse), old man sleeping and dreaming (reverse)
Jean-Victor Ségoffin
Medal, 68 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

31
The Stone, 1905
Stonecutters (obverse), Masons (reverse)
Alexandre Charpentier
Plaque, 74 x 62 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

32
Tender lovers, 1905
Young couple embracing in a field (obverse), music score (reverse)
Albert Bartholomé
Plaque, 80 x 63 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

33
To the poets without glory, 1905
Allegories flowering graves (obverse), Allegory holding a lyre and a laurel wreath (reverse)
Louis-Alexandre Bottée
Medal, 90 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

34
Infantry, 1905
Soldiers Marching (obverse), kneeling soldier watching (reverse)
Paul Roger-Bloche
Plaque, 55 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

35
The Joy of Life, 1906
Naked seated man (obverse), seated and embracing couple (reverse)
Raoul Lamourdedieu
Medal, 58 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

36
Blast of firedamp, 1906
Miners (obverse), explosion in a mine (reverse)
Henri-Léon Gréber
Medal, 72 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

37
The monkeys, 1906
Four monkeys sitting on a branch (obverse), monkey holding an Egyptian statuette of King Thoth (reverse)
Paul Jouve
Plaque, 48 x 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

38
The wind, 1906
Allegory of the storm and seated man bent over (obverse), woman in a landscape fighting against the wind (reverse)
Camille Lefèvre
Medal, 68 mm
Silver and bronze, struck with a pendulum

39
The two seasons, 1906
Young woman (obverse), old woman (reverse)
René de Saint-Marceaux
Plaque, 64 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

40
François le rémouleur, 1907
Remover sharpening a knife (obverse), woman skinning a rabbit (reverse)
Ovide Yencesse
Plaque, 70 x 50 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

41
The snack, 1907
Mother making her child drink (obverse), child watching cats quenching their thirst (reverse)
Geneviève Granger
Plaque, 50 x 74 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

42
Mother's caresses, 1907
Mother and child (obverse), two children embracing (reverse)
Albert Marque
Plaque, 71 x 45 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

43
The art of gardens, 1907
Gardener decorating a vase with a plant (obverse), trees in a park (reverse)
François Roques
Plaque, 75 x 43 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

44
Adolescents, 1907
Young naked man in an undergrowth (obverse), young naked women in an undergrowth (reverse)
Louis Dejean
Medal, 58 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

45
Summer, 1908
Woman in a boat (obverse), naked woman in a forest (reverse)
Firmin-Marcelin Michelet
Plaque, 64 x 43 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

46
The music, 1908
Quintet of musicians (obverse), woman singing accompanied by the piano (reverse)
Fernand David
Plaque, 53 x 75 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

47
The blacksmith, 1908
Man forging a dear on horseback (obverse), men shoeing a horse (reverse)
Emile Gaudissart
Plaque, 50 x 65 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

48
Faun and fawn, 1908
Portrait of a faun in profile (obverse), faun playing the diaule (reverse), 1908
Paul-Léonard Durousseau
Plaque, 68 x 32 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

49
Breton peasants
Seated man holding a bowl (obverse), woman next to a grazing cow (reverse), 1908
Pierre-Charles Lenoir
Plaque, 60 x 47 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

50
Mine and metallurgy, 1909
Women working in a mine (obverse), men working in a foundry (reverse)
Cornelius-Henri Theunissen
Plaque, 55 x 75 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

51
Spring and winter, 1909
Couples walking in an undergrowth (obverse), old woman in a winter landscape
Hippolyte Lefèbvre
Plaque, 68 x 80 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

52
Croatian peasants, 1909
Women carrying rosaries of onions (obverse), men standing facing each other (reverse)
Robert Frangès-Mihanovic
Plaque, 60 x 70 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

53
Helen, 1909
Helen in the middle of the ruins of Troy (obverse), Statue of the god Eros in an ancient landscape (reverse)
René Grégoire
Plaque, 90 x 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

54
Jewels, 1909
Women adorning themselves with jewels (obverse), women looking at flowers (reverse)
Paul Grandhomme
Medal, 60 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

55
The tub
Woman at her toilet (obverse), woman doing her hair (reverse)
Ovide Yencesse
Plaque, 65 x 42 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

56
Peasant women of Berry, 1910
Woman hanging a cloth (obverse), woman feeding a calf (reverse)
Emile-Ernest Nivet
Plaque, 80 x 45 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

57
Types of Biskra, 1910
Barka (obverse), Hamed (reverse)
Pierre-Charles Lenoir
Plaque, 60 x 40 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

58
Haymaking, 1910
Standing peasant woman (obverse), walking peasant (reverse)
Firmin-Marcelin Michelet
Plaque, 72 x 53 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

59
The bath, 1910
Women at their toilet (obverse), women and child in a garden (reverse)
Fernand David
Plaque, 70 x 57 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

60
Lina, 1919
Woman sitting in a garden (obverse), dancing Putto holding masks (reverse)
Domenico Trentacoste
Plaque, 70 x 56 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

61
To the Soldiers Who Died for the Fatherland, 1920
Two poilus (obverse), grieving woman (reverse)
Pierre-Marie Poisson
Plaque, 50 x 48 mm
Bronze, struck with a pendulum

Un coin du Vieux port, Granville • Gaston Roullet

Gaston Roullet (1847 - 1925) was discovered in 1874 at the Salon des artistes français with a watercolour entitled "Entrée du port de Dieppe" (Entering the Port in Dieppe). He developed the Norman theme at this time with views of Fécamp, or here of Granville.
In 1885, he was appointed painter to the Navy and the Colonial Departments, and took part in the colonial military campaigns to draw landscapes and cultures encountered during these expeditions. He later painted again many views of the Breton and Norman coasts.

Adam • Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) represents the figure of the artist par excellence, the champion of modern sculpture who revolutionised it against all odds. In 1881, Rodin was commissioned to create large figures of Adam and Eve to join The Gates of Hell. For Adam, Rodin undoubtedly used an existing work, since he was able to exhibit it at the 1881 Salon under the title "The Creation of Man."Both the title and the pose of this monumental figure explicitly reveal the influence of Michelangelo's works, especially the famous Adam painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512).

His highly developed musculature, which suggests great physical power, contrasts with his pose, which evokes a suffering or constrained being. Pointing to the ground, Rodin's Adam seems to insist on his earthly belonging.

Antoine Bourdelle • Héraklès

In 1893, Antoine Bourdelle joined Rodin's studio where he was hired as a practitioner, i.e. a simple executor. He worked with the master for more than fifteen years, participating in the creation of the "Bourgeois de Calais", among others, and became close to Rodin. Before leaving the sculptor's studio, Bourdelle emancipated himself in 1905 with his first solo exhibition. Bourdelle's reputation was to grow and public commissions were to multiply.

The sculptor, for whom "momentum is the supreme law", took a great interest in the figure of the archer Heracles, a symbol of virility and bravery, by having Major Doyen-Parigot, an accomplished athlete, pose for him. Heracles, whom the Romans call Hercules, is the only human to be granted immortality among the gods. The account of the demigod's exploits in the Twelve Labours is a famous episode in Greek mythology and a major iconographic source of art.
Faced with the birds of the lake of Stymphalus preparing to attack him, the hero shoots several arrows poisoned with the blood of the hydra and kills them. Bourdelle translates this contained impulse: the bust is thrown back, the gesture of the right arm is enough to express the sending of an arrow.

During the three years it took to create the final model of Herakles, Bourdelle produced eight preparatory studies that allow us to understand the creative process: reflections on the base and the position, but also a simplification of the model's features - an approach that echoes the artist's research on the synthesis of forms. The full-size plaster version was exhibited at the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-arts in 1910, and the first buyer of a bronze proof was Gabriel Thomas. The silhouette became famous as it was stamped on the school notebooks of the Héraklès brand.

Antoine Bourdelle • Portrait d’Anatole France, drapé sans draperie sur le devant

Elected to the Académie Française in 1896 and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, the writer Anatole France (1844-1924) became famous with Le crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). In addition to publishing historical novels (Les dieux ont soif, 1912, Le petit Pierre, 1918), France became increasingly interested in political issues and described the problems of his time in great detail (Histoire contemporaine, 1897-1901, L'île des pingouins, 1908). In his works, his irony and scepticism shine through.

Anatole France embodies the figure of the great writer of the time. A friendly and paternal figure, France had a decisive relationship with the young Marcel Proust, who saw him as "the illustrious and beloved Master", in his literary training. Marcel Proust's first publication, Les plaisirs et les jours (1896), features a preface by Anatole France.

France is said to have inspired Proust with some of the character traits of Bergotte, the great writer of La Recherche, whose famous death occurs while contemplating Vermeer's 'little yellow wall'. The writers Paul Bourget, Maurice Barrès and Alphonse Daudet can also be linked to this character.

Claude Monet • Falaise de Fécamp

On 15 April 1874, at the independent exhibition of Monet, Sisley, Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot and Renoir, among others, in the studio loaned by the photographer Nadar, the journalist Louis Leroy unwittingly coined the term "Impressionism" in a mockery of Monet's painting "Impression, Sunrise". And indeed, the exhibition caused a scandal. The artists were accused of giving only a "sketch" in which one could observe the touches and the material in contrast to the "finished" canvases of academic painting.

Monet became the leader of this movement, which created a new way of painting: artists painted what they felt without worrying about academic rules. The aim was to capture the ephemeral, to capture the changing light with quick touches of visible colour.

Landscapes played an important role for Monet and the artist worked "on the spot", in the open air, sometimes painting the same motif several times. In Normandy he found perfect subjects for developing his impressionist style, including the cliffs of Fécamp in this masterpiece.

A visitor to museums and art galleries, it was at Durand-Ruel's in April 1899 that Proust discovered the exhibition "Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley". What Proust admires in Monet's pioneering genius is the figure of an artist like he likes: the inventor of a new way of painting, the creator of a new world.
"You were talking about the water lilies: I think you know the ones Claude Monet painted. What a genius! [...] "Oh, this must be the series that Elstir, the greatest of contemporary painters, told us about," exclaimed Albertine. Sodom and Gomorrah (1921).

Edgar Degas • Danseuse violette

Today considered one of the great Impressionist artists, Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) distinguished himself from this group of artists by favouring in his work scenes of interiors, of social life, and more particularly the world of dance, bringing a new attention to artificial lighting and movement.

Thus, in his own way, Degas contributed to the revolution in the way of looking at things that Impressionism proposed, but as a great draughtsman, he remained faithful to the traditional methods of painting - studies after the living model, preparatory drawings, etc.

Degas was fascinated by the ballets at the Opéra Garnier - during the Second Empire and the Third Republic, the Opéra and ballet were fashionable - and their backstage scenes, which he explored like no other painter. Dance is the ideal theme to accompany the painter's research into line and movement. Degas' dancers are not dancers," said Gauguin. They are machines in motion with graceful lines of prodigious balance.

Between 1880 and 1890, Degas painted pastels of dancers and nudes from memory. After 1892, the artist refused to exhibit, but his forms and colours were to be a source of inspiration for the younger generations of the early 20th century, whether Fauvists or Cubists.

Édouard Vuillard • Le jardin à Amfreville

Although Édouard Vuillard was initially interested in realistic still lifes and domestic interiors, in 1889 he joined a group of artists known as the "Nabis" (Hebrew for "prophets"), including Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis. For these artists, it was a question of freeing themselves from all academic conventions and in particular from the faithful reproduction of nature or the scene observed.

His favourite subject was the representation of interior scenes with a soft atmosphere. His numerous journeys from 1898-1899 onwards placed the landscape at the centre of his work. At the dawn of the 20th century, his works are characterised by a nuanced search for colour ranges, a balance between light and dark, simplified motifs, in a balance between impressionism and naturalism. Vuillard spent many periods in Honfleur, Villerville, Amfreville and Cabourg between 1900 and 1914 - the park of the house in Amfreville (Calvados) inspired him for many works.

Étude pour le portrait d’Igor Stravinsky • Jacques-Émile Blanche

This portrait depicts Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), the composer of "The Rite of Spring." Performed in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1913, this show caused a scandal because of its modernity. Jacques-Émile Blanche was very close to the Ballets Russes, directed by Serge Diaghilev and for which Igor Stravinsky composed the music. Against a neutral background, the artist depicts the facial features of the composer in a striking manner.

Étude pour un portrait de Jean Cocteau • Jacques-Émile Blanche

Another inspiraton for Octave’s character, the nephew of the Verdurins in « In Search of Lost Time », Jean Cocteau, literary prodigy with many talents, was a very close friend of Jacques-Émile Blanche, whom he visited in Normandy (in Offranville) in 1912.
Blanche painted other portraits of his friend Cocteau: one, full-length and in a tuxedo, is kept at the Musée de Grenoble. The other, in country-style clothing and in the garden of Blanche's house in Offranville during the summer of 1913, is kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.
Jean Cocteau, who for a long time pursued a correspondence with his friend Blanche, even when life separated their paths, wrote to him one day: “Am I not somewhat your son?” Jean Cocteau was also an important friend of Marcel Proust and was among the first people to recognize the genius of the writer.

Eugène Boudin • Marée basse (étude)

Eugène Boudin was a reference painter for the Belle Époque generation and had a considerable influence on landscape painting, a genre that had previously been a minor one and was now experiencing a revival. Boudin, whom Claude Monet considered his master, prefigured the Impressionist revolution.

On the beaches, Boudin observed the sea, which was always the same and always repeated, and the spectacle of the sky in paintings that Charles Baudelaire described as "meteorological beauties". He also painted the boats, the fishermen and the bourgeoisie who, since 1860, had been enjoying the pleasures of the birth of seaside tourism on the Côte fleurie. His works were a great commercial success among these holidaymakers.

Boudin also painted landscapes where land, air and sea seem to merge, "where the sea enters the land, where the land is already marine", as Proust wrote. In this sense, he foreshadows the figure of the painter Elstir in Balbec, whose seascapes the narrator of "In Search of Lost Time" admires as visual metaphors that transform the sea into land, and the land into sea. In his painting of the port of Carquethuit, Elstir uses "only marine terms for the little town, and only urban terms for the sea", and "accustoms the eyes to recognise no fixed boundary, no absolute demarcation, between land and ocean".

THE SEINE AT VERNON • PIERRE BONNARD

Pierre Bonnard, like Édouard Vuillard, belongs to the group of Nabis, artists influenced both by the Impressionist legacy and by non-European arts. Their painting is characterized by vivid colors applied in flat areas, a strong outline around figures, and non-academic framing.

In 1911, Pierre Bonnard purchased a house in Vernon, where he stayed until 1936. This gave him the opportunity to paint numerous views of the Seine. "The Seine at Vernon" exemplifies Pierre Bonnard's preference for a composition rich in colors, highlighting the exuberant nature of the garden. The expansive viewpoint, revealing the curves of the river in the background, allows Pierre Bonnard to showcase his talent as a colorist: the orange and green hues converse with the pink of the sky, giving a soothing aspect to this twilight view. During his years in Vernon, Pierre Bonnard frequently visited Claude Monet (1840-1926), who greatly inspired him.

JEAN HELLEU, CHILD, AT HIS WORKTABLE • PAUL HELLEU

Helleu adopted techniques from the 18th century, the golden age of pastel and three-crayon drawing, cherished by Jean-Antoine Watteau. From 1885, the young artist's pastels enjoyed great success. He borrowed the expertise of his friends Blanche and Boldini and mastered large-format drawing on paper or canvas. Helleu tirelessly drew quick sketches to capture the poses of his children: his wife Alice and their children, Ellen, Jean, and Paulette, were his favorite models.

Born in 1894, Jean was the second child of the Helleu couple. Often portrayed as a diligent young artist, he frequently wore the fashionable sailor suit, reminiscent of the Helleu family's love for yachting. During the first part of his career, he used his artistic talent in the service of fashion and luxury as an advertiser. He practiced sailing and from 1945 to 1947, he became the Official Painter of the Navy.