Louis WELDEN-HAWKINS (1849-1910) Lot n° 1

Woman with parrots Mixed media on paper Signed down in the center Rectangular grooved stained wood frame with golden brass leaf pattern spandrels Around 1890-1900 Dimensions : 53 x 43 cm (with frame) The painter Louis Welden Hawkins, of English parents, born in Germany in 1849, was very close to the Symbolist milieu. He was the son of an English naval officer and an Austrian baroness. After becoming a naturalized French citizen in 1895, he pursued his career in France. A pupil at the Julian Academy, of Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, he took part in several of the Rose Croix exhibitions between 1893 and 1897 and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1881 to 1891 where he achieved great success and at the Salon de la Société des Beaux Arts from 1894 to 1911. He maintained close relations with the writers involved in this symbolist movement, including Jean Lorrain, Paul Adam, Laurent Tailhade, Robert de Montesquiou and Mallarmé, but also with personalities from the trade union and socialist political world, including the deputy Camille Pelletan, and the feminist journalist Séverine, whose portrait he will portray. His feminine figures are in the tradition of the Pre-Raphaelites with their dreamy seriousness, one perceives in them the quest for a timeless fragile reality, which demands attention and which distils the quintessence of things.