Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL

Bernard Boutet de Monvel was born to a well-known artist and illustrator at the time,
Maurice Boutet de Monvel, and raised in both Paris and Nemours. The young Bernard also
became a painter and illustrator, training under Luc Olivier Merson for a time. Introduced to
engraving by a fellow student, he quickly became an undisputed master of the technique.
Bernard began to show his paintings in Parisian Salons in 1903 and from 1907 his talent
became recognized equally well in Europe and the Unites States, where he was also sending
his work to exhibitions.

In the twenties and thirties he provided illustrations for Harper’s Bazaar, the most prestigious
and lucrative publications to work for at the time. He continued to have success with his painting and showed at exhibitions around the world. He came to be known for both
landscape and portrait painting, but gradually specialised in portraits and cityscapes while he
continued illustrating books and fashion magazines. He also painted elegant still lifes, placing
acutely detailed plants on neutral backgrounds. Considered an Art Deco artist by some,
Boutet de Monvel didn’t categorise himself in this manner. He died in a plane crash in 1949.

Boutet de Monvel travelled extensively, visiting Italy, Chile, the US and Morocco where the
present work was painted. Painted in 1918 in Fez, where the squadron V 551 was stationed in
which Bernard Boutet de Monvel was an aviator-bomber, this emblematic and major work
was among those that the painter brought back from Morocco. It aroused such acclaim in
France that it was exhibited in the May 1925 issue of French Vogue (see Fig. 1). Jean Laporte
who reproduced it in this issue entitled Visions of Morocco by Bernard Boutet de Monvel and
Si Azouaou Mammeri, commented: "This immobile [figure] under his yellowish burnous
embodies the soul of Morocco and gives Bernard Boutet de Monvel's art an eloquent idea".

As evidenced by a photograph taken by Bernard Boutet de Monvel himself on the terrace of
his house in the Fez medina, it indeed depcits a young Moroccan girl covered with
a battaniyya - perhaps one of his servants - that he took as a model for this painting.

The hieratism of this figure, the perfect harmony between the yellow and red ochre of
the battaniyya excited Bernard Boutet de Monvel to the point that he made a second
composition from this model, entitled Negresse sur une terrasse in Fez. Nevertheless, it was
the present painting that he chose to exhibit from May 2 to 23, 1925, under the
title Négresse during the exhibition Le Maroc Peintures et Bas-Reliefs by Bernard Boutet de
Monvel at the prestigious Barbazanges gallery in Paris. The same gallery that, among many
other masterpieces, exhibited for the first time in 1916 Les demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo
Picasso. The present work was acquired from the exhibition by the prestigious Hollywood
director and actor Ingram Hollywood (1892-1950), who took control of the Victorine studios
in Nice in 1925, previously obtained from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Such was his fascination
with Arabic culture and civilisation that he converted to Islam in 1933.

Boutet de Monvel, for his part, preserved a smaller replica of this work, a replica that was
exhibited in 1951 at the Galliera Museum and in 2001 at the Mona Bismarck Foundation for
retrospectives devoted to his work, showing his deep connection and affection for this
painting, completed during his time in Fez.