Portrait of Elizabeth (Bessie) de Cuevas Faure
signed and dated 'Leonor Fini / 1950' (lower right)
oil on canvas
55 x 33cm, unframed

Provenance:
Bessie de Cuevas, Paris
Thence by descent Hubert Faure, London

Literature:
Richard, "LF essentially Parisienne," The Queen, London, Dec 20, 1950
Overstreet and Zuckerman, Leonor Fini Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, 2 vol., Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich, 2021

We are grateful to Richard Overstreet for confirming the identity of the sitter of the present portrait, which is reproduced in Leonor Fini Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings
A certificate of authenticity will be provided with this lot

Argentine born and of mixed Slavic, Argentine, Italian, and Spanish heritage, Leonor Fini was raised by her mother in Trieste, Italy and is today remembered as a fashion icon, feminist hero, and one of the most influential female artists of the mid-twentieth century, with her career in the visual arts encompassing everything from portraiture and product design to set and costume design for stage and screen.

Independent and headstrong like her mother, Fini was expelled from three schools resulting in the cessation of her formal education during her adolescence. Free from the constraints of schooling, Fini, aged just 13, began training herself as an artist, sketching cadavers from the local morgue, devouring tomes from her Uncle’s vast personal library, and studying the Old Masters on display in museums throughout Europe. In 1931 Fini moved to Paris where her magnetic and eccentric presence quickly won her many friends and admirers, including Max Ernst, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali. Although she was enthusiastically welcomed into Surrealist circles, and frequently contributed to Surrealist exhibitions, Fini refused to align herself with any one movement and instead, cultivated her own singular brand of Modernism, incorporating surrealist motifs with a disparate spectrum of influences, including the Pre-Raphaelites, Mannerists and old Flemish masters.

Condition Report

Oil on canvas attached to a wooden stretcher bar with a horizontal cross bar. The canvas tension is slack, leading to undulations across the surface and stretcher bar marks where the canvas is in contact with the wooden frame behind, leading to cracks in the paint layer. There are numerous scuffs and scratches across the surface, the deeper ones causing loss to the paint layer. In the area of the sitter's face, an impact from the reverse has caused a convex deformation to the canvas and paint layer. In the sitter's right eye is a brown accretion or fly spot on the surface. Under ultraviolet light it is evident that there is some reworking to the face and chest of the sitter. Further examination would be needed to determine if this is by the artist's hand or if it is later restoration.