Louis Sérendat de Belzim

LOUIS SÉRENDAT DE BELZIM (Mauritius, 1854 - Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris 1933).
"Lady with cigarette".
Oil on canvas.
Presents a tear in the right area.
Signed and located in Paris.
Measurements: 58 x 35 cm; 71 x 55 cm (frame).
Portrait of lady of great instantaneity, similar to a fleeting vision captured of the natural one, more than to a portrait calmly elaborated in a study. The woman poses being aware of our gaze. Adopting a flirtatious attitude, as she sketches a smile behind the cigarette she holds next to her mouth. The vision of a woman wearing men's clothes, short bobbed hair and smoking reflects the icon of the woman of the early twentieth century, which began to emancipate, thus adopting an independence both in their actions and in the way they dress. The composition is typical of the portrait of the time, with the long-busted figure in the foreground, vividly illuminated and cut out against a dark, flat background that enhances her corporeality.
As in the rest of Europe, the portrait became in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the leading genre par excellence of French painting, as a result of the new social structures that were implemented in the Western world throughout this century, embodying the ultimate expression of the transformation of taste and mentality of the new clientele, emerged between the nobility and the wealthy gentry, who would take the reins of history in this period. While official circles gave preponderance to other artistic genres, such as history painting, and the incipient collecting encouraged the profusion of costume paintings, portraiture monopolized the demand for painting destined for the more private sphere, as a reflection of the value of the individual in the new society. This genre embodies the permanent presence of the image of its protagonists, to be enjoyed in the intimacy of a studio, in the daily warmth of a family cabinet or presiding over the main rooms of the house.
Louis Sérendat de Belzim was born in Mauritius, a French-speaking colony of the British Empire, in a Franco-Mauritian family. He began his artistic training with Alfred de La Hogue (1810-1886) and Lisis Le Maire. He achieved a remarkable recognition for his portraits of local nobles. Examples of this are his portraits of Victor Delafaye, Sir Eugene Leclézio2, Léon Carvalho, Dr. Judge Segrais, Brown-Sequard, Louis Button, etc. He left for France in 1880, where he became a pupil of Carolus Duran and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. He joined the Society of Independent Artists as treasurer, because his paintings were rejected by the Salon in 1885 and 1863. Although he finally exhibited at the independent Salon 1887, 1890 and 1893. It was his portrait of Parisienne that won him a gold medal at the French exhibition in Tunis in 1887. Thus granting him great artistic success that he consolidated later in his individual exhibition of 1894 in Paris.