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Lot Essay
'It's curious,' commented Laurencin to her loyal companion Armand Loewengard, 'when I begin a picture my women are girls to start with, but then they all become princesses' (quoted in R. Gimpel, Memoirs of an Art Dealer, New York, 1966, p. 403). Laurencin's joy in the feminine accessories that recur in her figure pictures serve to capture the essence of the female figure, and deliberately avoid any specific act of representation of the sitter.
By the mid-1920s, Marie Laurencin's position at the heart of Parisian society was firmly established. Her role in the artistic avant-garde - from her participation in la bande à Picasso in the Bateau-Lavoir days before the First World War, through to her collaboration with Picabia on the Dada journal 391 - was matched by her entertaining of such luminaries as the King and Queen of the Belgians, as well as, among others, Helena Rubinstein, Colette and James Joyce. She also enjoyed a measure of financial security with the dealers Paul Rosenberg and Jos Hessel contracted to purchase half shares in her output - although, on a characteristically mischievous note, Laurencin complained to her friend René Gimpel that the funds from Messrs Rosenberg and Hessel were not enough to cover her purchase of Chanel coats.
By the mid-1920s, Marie Laurencin's position at the heart of Parisian society was firmly established. Her role in the artistic avant-garde - from her participation in la bande à Picasso in the Bateau-Lavoir days before the First World War, through to her collaboration with Picabia on the Dada journal 391 - was matched by her entertaining of such luminaries as the King and Queen of the Belgians, as well as, among others, Helena Rubinstein, Colette and James Joyce. She also enjoyed a measure of financial security with the dealers Paul Rosenberg and Jos Hessel contracted to purchase half shares in her output - although, on a characteristically mischievous note, Laurencin complained to her friend René Gimpel that the funds from Messrs Rosenberg and Hessel were not enough to cover her purchase of Chanel coats.