Gustave Moreau
Première Danseuse: Mademoiselle Subra, Ballet de Sapho
Auction Closed
February 5, 09:31 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Gustave Moreau
French 1826 - 1898
Première Danseuse: Mademoiselle Subra, Ballet de Sapho
signed lower right: Gustave Moreau (lower right); inscribed Melle Subra 1ère Danseuse / ballet de Sapho (lower left), -ors, violets et verts (lower right), ailes blanches ou / vertes ou/ gris tourterelle / (on supprimera les ailes) (center right)
graphite on paper
image: 8 ¼ by 6 in.; 21 by 15.2 cm (sight)
framed: 19 ¼ by 15 ⅜ in.; 48.9 by 39.1 cm
Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 18 May 1910;
Private Collection, France;
By whom sold, Replica Shoes 's, London, 12 November 2008, lot 255;
Where acquired by the present owner.
P-L Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris 1976, p. 344, no. 316.
P-L Mathieu, Gustave Moreau. Monographie et nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre achevé, Paris 1998, p. 387, no. 351, illustrated.
One of the most inventive painters of his generation, Gustave Moreau’s oeuvre encompasses a wide variety of mediums and pictorial traditions. Executed in 1883, the present drawing relates to a group of exotic costume designs for the famed ballerina, Mademoiselle Subra, for her performance as premiere danseuse in the 1884 revival of Charles Gounod’s opera Sapho.