Art: Pleasing Paul

. . . Most of us believe that these beautiful ladies lived in a world of sweetness and leisure. On the contrary, their nerves were strained by 52 weeks of routs, jours, fashionable events of all sorts and by problems of a private nature. Their moods, which hinged on the more or less tolerable torment of the tightly laced corset . . . were feverish, stormy, or even worse.

Thus last week was introduced a benefit art show of some of the glamor girls of the turn of the century. Given by Manhattan’s Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, the show featured the work of the most blandishing portrayers of women in recent history: the late John Singer Sargent and his less famous French friend, the late Paul Helleu (pronounced Ell-uh). Both had undoubtedly, as the catalogue stated, felt the sorcery of young girls and of the ladies in whom the fascination of youth had been replaced by the art of studied sophistication. Both had been surrounded by wows and had made them look even more wowing than they were.

Spectators already familiar with Sargent were apt to turn to the swank, super-Gibsonesque drypoint portraits made by Helleu during the first two decades of the century. He is said to have done only four portraits of men—and the reason seemed obvious. Among his swan-necked beauties were the actress Liane de Pougy, Madame Helleu, Michael Strange, Mme. Louis Jacques Balsan (the former Duchess of Marlborough).

Some of Helleu’s oldtime clientele appeared at last week’s opening ceremonies. The event, on Bastille Day, was one of the most worldly of Manhattan’s wartime week and produced some deft social comment. Reported the New York Journal-American’s Cholly Knickerbocker:*”. . . the former Duchess of Marlborough wasn’t there. . . . The always impeccably clad Mrs. Harrison Williams arrived at the showing via her dainty ‘tootsies.’ . . . Almost everyone had an amusing tale of adventures encountered on busses, taxis and even subways.”

When Paul-César Helleu was young, in the ’70s, he ran away from a comfortable Paris home, studied at the Beaux Arts, made friends with Sargent. He painted cathedral interiors and scenes of Versailles in autumn, reached his greatest renown as an etcher of pretty women in all seasons. He led a pleasant, quasi-boulevardier life, was happy with his wife in a satiny apartment near the Bois de Boulogne.

His great friends were the deft caricaturist Sem, and Jean Giovanni Boldini, “The King of Swish,” whose portraits of women seemed like the ravishing end toward which Helleu’s casual etchings were moving.

In his middle years, Helleu maintained a small yacht, aboard which he used to receive the neurasthenic Marcel Proust, transported at night from Paris to the sea in a favorite taxicab. Helleu is said to have been, in part, the inspiration for the painter Elstir in Proust’s great A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Helleu often visited the U.S., saw much of the Francophile architect Whitney Warren. Warren got Helleu to design the starry blue heavens which can still be seen, faded and streaked, on the main ceiling of Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

<footnote>* Pseudonym of the late social reporter Maury H.B. Paul, now used by his successor, Eve Brown.</footnote>