Pastel and drypoint artist Paul-César Helleu’s enchanting portraits of fashionable women beautifully captured the glamour of late 1800s Paris; his depictions of the city’s elite becoming symbols of the elegant gaiety that defined the Belle Époque era.
Like many prominent French artists, Helleu studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he came under the mentorship of academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Yet, his true inspirations were his peers – impressionist Claude Monet and lifelong friend John Singer Sargent – whose influences can be seen in Helleu’s luminous, expressive style. (A 2025 retrospective of Sargent’s works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art included one by Helleu, highlighting their close connection.)
Though his rise was gradual, Helleu’s talent soon captivated Parisian high society, with his friendship with literary icon Marcel Proust and his marriage to Alice Guérin helping further the artist’s career. Helleu’s portraits of his wife, with their sweeping lines and refined detail, captured the imagination of aristocratic women like Élisabeth de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe. The duchess, a notable patron of the arts, played a vital role in promoting Helleu and was herself the subject of one of his large-scale portraits (now part of EKCART ASIA’s pastels collection). More famously, she inspired the character of Duchesse de Guermantes, a central figure in Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. De Caraman-Chimay was also a supporter of science, often financing Marie Curie’s groundbreaking research.
Helleu’s talent earned him the Légion d’honneur in 1904 and prestigious commissions, including the painting of the Grand Central Terminal ceiling in New York. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.
