LOUIS SÉRENDAT DE BELZIM (Mauritius, 1854 - Saint-Germain-en-Laye,... Lot 29

LOUIS SÉRENDAT DE BELZIM (Mauritius, 1854 - Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris 1933). "Lady with a Cigarette". Oil on canvas. With a tear on the right side. Signed and located in Paris. Measurements: 58 x 35 cm; 71 x 55 cm (frame). Portrait of a lady of great instantaneity, similar to a fleeting vision captured from the natural, more than to a portrait calmly elaborated in a studio. The woman poses while being aware of our gaze. She adopts a flirtatious attitude, as she smiles behind the cigarette she holds to her mouth. The vision of a woman in men's clothes, with short bobbed hair and smoking, reflects the icon of the woman of the early 20th century, who was beginning to emancipate herself, thus adopting an independence both in her actions and in the way she dressed. The composition is typical of the portrait of the period, with the long-busted figure in the foreground, brightly lit and set against a dark, flat background that emphasises her body. As in the rest of Europe, portraiture became the leading genre in French painting in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the new social structures that were established in the Western world during that century, and embodied the ultimate expression of the transformation in the taste and mentality of the new clientele that emerged among the nobility and the wealthy gentry, who took the reins of history during this period. While official circles gave precedence to other artistic genres, such as history painting, and the incipient collectors encouraged the profusion of genre paintings, portraits were in great demand for paintings intended for the more private sphere, as a reflection of the value of the individual in the new society. This genre embodied the permanent presence of the image of its subjects, to be enjoyed in the intimacy of a studio, in the everyday warmth of a family cabinet or presiding over the main rooms of the house. Louis Sérendat de Belzim was born in Mauritius, a French-speaking colony of the British Empire, into a Franco-Mauritian family. He began his artistic training with Alfred de La Hogue (1810-1886) and Lysis Le Maire. He achieved considerable renown for his portraits of local nobles. His portraits of Victor Delafaye, Sir Eugene Leclézio2, Léon Carvalho, Dr. Judge Segrais, Brown-Sequard, Louis Button, etc. are examples of this. He went to France in 1880, where he became a pupil of Carolus Duran and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. He joined the Society of Independent Artists as treasurer, because his paintings were rejected by the Salon in 1885 and 1863. Although he finally exhibited at the independent Salon in 1887, 1890 and 1893. It was his portrait of Parisienne that won him a gold medal at the French exhibition in Tunis in 1887. This gave him great artistic success, which he later consolidated in his solo exhibition in Paris in 1894.