Tamara De Lempicka
1898-1980 | Polish

Flora I

Signed “Lempicka 1933” (bottom right)
Watercolor on paper

“Each of my paintings is a self-portrait.” — Tamara De Lempicka, June 5, 1936

Exuding an ethereal femininity, Flora I is a remarkable watercolor portrait of a red-lipped woman, hair full of lush roses and daisies. Painted by the highly-skilled Tamara de Lempicka, the sitter exudes an elegant sophistication. Lempicka’s use of watercolor further highlights the fresh, carefree qualities of the sitter, with effusive and gossamer brushstrokes applying light washes of color to the page.

Lempicka’s life was marked by constant movement. Born in Poland at the turn of the 20th century, Lempicka was forced to flee to France in 1918 after the beginning of the Russian Revolution. During a visit to Italy in her youth, she became enraptured by the Italian Old Masters. Inspired by this formative experience, Lempicka enrolled in Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris to take up painting. She studied under famed avant-garde artists Maurice Denis and André Lhote, who introduced her to Cubism, and she began exhibiting at the Parisian salons as early as 1922. Lempicka became a fixture in Parisian high society, spending much of her time hosting wealthy elites in her atelier on Rue Méchain. Lempicka is best remembered for her neo-Cubist and Art Deco compositions, and Flora I offerse the rare opportunity to acquire a watercolor from the glamorous artist.

With a resurgence of appreciation for the Art Deco period, combined with the success of her retrospective at Galerie de Luxembourg in 1971, Lempicka’s work has achieved remarkable acclaim in recent decades. Much of her work resides in museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Havre, and the National Museum Warsaw, among others. Alain Blondel, the esteemed French author who compiled the artist’s catalogue raisonné, wrote fondly of her uniqueness: “Tamara de Lempicka will always continue to defy categorization. Her art and her life destiny do not fit into the usual framework for 20th-century artists. The idea that art could be a profession was foreign to Lempicka. Her life and her painting were too closely intertwined for that.”

Flora I can be found in the artist’s catalogue raisonné; though Lempicka was a prolific artist, watercolor paintings were exceedingly rare in her oeuvre.

Circa 1937
Dated 1932; Blondel notes date and signature was added by Lempicka later