José María Sert (1874-1945) 'Vision de Naples' An eleven-leaf screen, circa 1923

Collection of Gabrielle Chanel, acquired circa 1925 and installed at 29, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré;

Bought by Sert when Mademoiselle Chanel left the apartment several years later;

Collection of the Marquise de Ruisedana, for her palace on La Rambla, Barcelona;

Duran Arte y Subastas, Madrid, 28 March 1995, lot 42;

Pierre Passebon, Galerie du Passage, Paris, 2002;

Christie's Paris, Important Mobilier et Objets d'Art, Orfèvrerie, Céramiques Européennes et Art d'Asie, 23 June 2005, lot 410;

Private Collection.

____________________________________________

Collection de Gabrielle Chanel, acquise vers 1925 et installée au 29, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré ;

Acheté par Sert lorsque Mademoiselle Chanel a quitté l'appartement quelques années plus tard;

Collection de la Marquise de Ruisedana, pour son palais sur La Rambla, Barcelone;

Duran Arte y Subastas, Madrid, 28 mars 1995, lot 42;

Pierre Passebon, Galerie du Passage, Paris, 2002;

Christie's Paris, Important Mobilier et Objets d'Art, Orfèvrerie, Céramiques Européennes et Art d'Asie, 23 juin 2005, lot 410;

Collection privée.

José Maria Sert (1874-1945), the "Tiepolo of the Ritz", is part of the closed circle of the great society artists of the 20th century. He married the famous Misia Godebska whom Forain introduced to him, better known as Misia Sert, a central figure in artistic and literary Paris at the end of the 19th century and between the wars. Muse successively of Mallarmé, Vuillard, Renoir, Proust, Diaghilev and Cocteau, Misia was also the confidante of Gabrielle Chanel for whom Sert created this screen.

Undermined by the Parisian avant-garde, he is part of a primarily decorative painting tradition influenced by Goya, Manet and of course Tiepolo. In his studio in the rue Barbet de Jouy, Sert created a grandiose decor in the image of his painting, mixing baroque furniture, gilded bronzes, crystals and Coromandel screens. Gabrielle Chanel retained this lesson in decoration and applied it in all her Parisian residences thereafter, as her apartment on rue Cambon still testifies. Sert held a salon there where he received the entire Café Society of the time, who commissioned him for multiple projects. Specializing in very large wall decorations and screens, he went from polychrome painting to monochrome painting on a gold background, which better suited his exuberant style. He received important commissions at the turn of the century throughout Europe and more particularly in England (between 1914 and 1915 for Lady Ripon at Combe Court and Sir Philip Sassoon at Lympe and between 1918 and 1919 for Sir Saxton Noble at Wretham Hall). He received his first commission in the United States in 1924 for Mr. Joshua Cosden's music room in Palm Beach. An exhibition in New York at the Wildenstein Galleries completed his launch across the Atlantic. He then undertook grandiose projects such as an entire room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in 1930, and the entrance main building of Rockefeller Center, built in 1933.

"Art loses the last representative of great painting", wrote Paul Claudel in Le Figaro on 14 December 1945, on the death of his friend José María Sert. The monumentality of his work and the power of his personality made Sert an artist unanimously admired in his time.