Still Life with a Vase of Flowers

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, dit Balthus (1908 Paris - 2001 La Rossinière)

1958

Pencil on paper ; signed at the lower right "Balthus" ; 34.7 x 26.4 cm

Provenance :

Château de Chassy, Frédérique Tison collection ; Paris, Artcurial, 8th December 2020.

Exhibitions :

Balthus, drawings and watercolors (New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1967, n°18) ; Balthus (London, Tate Gallery, 1968, n°77) ; Balthus, drawings, watercolors, oils (Andros, Museum of Modern Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation,1990, n°61) ; Balthus at the Villa Medici (Rome, Villa Medici, 1990) ; Balthus - Un atelier dans le Morvan 1953-1961 (Dijon, Museum of Fine Arts, 1999, n°48).

Bibliography :

X.Xing, Balthus, Exhibition Catalogue, Hong Kong, Pekin, Taipei, 1995 ; J.Clair, V.Monnier, Balthus, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre complet, Gallimard, Paris, 1999, n°D931, reproduced p.30.

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Balthus moved in the Château de Chassy, in the Nièvre region, in 1953. Frédérique Tison, his brother Pierre Klossowski's daughter-in-law, joined him in 1954. She lived with him until 1962, when he met Setsuko Ideta, a year after leaving the château to take up a post at the Villa Médicis in Rome. Frédérique Tison kept the château until her death in 2018, as well as numerous drawings that only left the boxes in the workshop for prestigious exhibitions, notably at the Tate Gallery in 1968 and the Villa Médicis in 1990.

At Chassy, writes art historian James Lord, Balthus "reached the apogee of his career, painting many of his finest pictures and producing dozens of superb drawings" (Some remarkable Men, New York, 1996). Balthus's father, Erich Klossowski, had been the German translator of the first major biography of Cézanne, by his dealer Ambroise Vollard.