Balthus valuation
Painted still, airless rooms and enigmatic figures, in a manner that took nothing from the movements around him.
Balthus (1908–2001) was born Balthasar Klossowski in Paris, the son of the painter and art historian Erich Klossowski.
What a work by Balthus is worth
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Bio
Balthus (1908–2001) was born Balthasar Klossowski in Paris, the son of the painter and art historian Erich Klossowski. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, close to his mother, helped publish his first work in 1921: Mitsou, a wordless story in forty drawings about a boy and his lost cat, with a preface by Rilke. Largely self-taught, he learned by copying Piero della Francesca and Poussin, and by the 1930s had a manner of his own, in pictures such as The Street of 1933 and The Mountain of 1937, quite apart from the Surrealism and abstraction around him. He moved to Rome in 1961 as director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici, and from 1977 lived at the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, Switzerland.
He worked slowly and made few paintings, many of them now in museums, so drawings and works on paper are what a seller is more likely to hold. The reference is the catalogue raisonné compiled by Virginie Monnier under the direction of Jean Clair, published by Gallimard in 1999, and auction catalogues cite its P numbers for paintings and D numbers for drawings; Yves Guignard is working on a revision. A work not listed there needs a good explanation. Many later paintings are in casein and tempera rather than oil, with a dry, chalky surface that is sensitive to handling and earlier restoration. His pictures of adolescent girls have long drawn objections, and in 2017 a public petition asked the Metropolitan Museum to remove Thérèse Dreaming from display, which it declined to do, so subject can affect how a picture is received.
At a glance
- Born
- 29 February 1908, Paris
- Died
- 18 February 2001, Rossinière
The Louvre, the theatre and the archive
The Children, of 1937, belonged to Picasso and is now in the Louvre. Balthus also designed sets and costumes for the theatre, including Artaud's The Cenci in 1935, Camus's L'État de siège in 1948 and Così fan tutte in 1950, so designs and studies for these productions can appear alongside the easel work.
His archives, the Fonds Balthus, are on long-term deposit at the Musée cantonal des beaux-arts in Lausanne. Earlier provenance often runs through Pierre Matisse in New York, who showed him from 1938, and Gagosian has shown the work in recent years.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
