Cléo de Merode - A Portrait of the Dancer and Actress by Alfredo Muller, 1869-1939

Alfredo Muller, 1869-1939
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Cléo de Merode - A Portrait of the Dancer and Actress

Original etching and aquatint printed in colours. C.1903. Signed in pencil. Numbered from the edition of 50 (36/50). Printed at the studio of Delâtre. Issued by Sagot, Paris c.1903. Rare.
Ref: Wurzer Gallery 1988 - Alfredo Muller no 13.

Excellent rich impression with very strong colours. On heavy cream laid Arches paper. Generally excellent condition; print surface excellent, the slightest trace of a mount mark and of time toning on the reverse only. The bottom 1/2 inch of the sheet folded (5 1/2ins from the
image). Full large margins (including the deckel). Sheet: 24 x 17 1/4ins. Plate: 14 3/8 x 13 5/8ins. (365x346mm)

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Alfredo Muller?s portrait of the music hall artiste Cléo de Merode is one of the great images of French turn-of-the-century printmaking. In its combination of expressive sinuous art nouveau outline and its stylised simplifications of form and surface it is one of the ?little masterpieces? of the unique era of the beginning of the 1900?s in Paris.

Alfredo Muller was born in Italy to Swiss parents; they sent him to study art in Florence and by the mid 1880?s he was beginning to exhibit. In 1888 he moved to Paris with his family and continued his art studies there. By the early 1890?s he had joined the Société des Artistes Indépendants, and it was there that he met two artists who greatly influenced him Raffaelli and Toulouse-Lautrec. It was almost certainly Raffaelli who suggested to him the idea of working in colour etching, and Lautrec?s style had a profound effect on his thinking.

Although he continued to paint and draw, but it was through his colour etchings that he made his public name and his lasting reputation. Many of his earliest works (around 1897) are studies of domestic interior themes, such as figures around a piano or young girls reading, handled with a quality of blended colour and flowing line which has a strong symbolist element. Around 1900, however, the contours of the figures and objects become much more defined and he introduced a quality of rhythmic stylisation, with the spaces between the contour lines simplified down to flat areas of colour. It is these works with their very individual atmosphere which are the most compelling in his oeuvre. The portrait of Cléo de Merode is the most famous example of his colour etchings of this period.