Bernard BOUTET DE MONVEL

Datable to the 1920s, these two drawings were part of an group of drawings by Bernard Boutet de Monvel that served as studies for magazine illustrations. The artist worked for a variety of French magazines between the 1900s and the 1920s, perhaps most notably the Gazette du Bon Ton, for which he provided numeorus vignettes and illustrations. As has been noted of his illustrations, ‘Boutet de Monvel’s work...was striking for the pared back and rectilinear qualities that were so characteristic of the sleekness of his style. In place of sinuous curves, elaborate volutes and glistening golds, he preferred the pure, controlled lines of a pale outline...This productive economy of means led him to also make color subordinate to line.’

A somewhat similar drawing by Boutet de Monvel - depicting an inebriated, elegantly dressed man in a top hat attempting to fit a key into a door - was with Stephen Ongpin Fine Art in 2017 and is today in private collection in California. A photograph of a drawing of a closely related composition is in the files of the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.