PAINTING
Portrait of Soprano Lina Cavalieri–The Most Beautiful Woman In The World–Is For Sale

Italian portrait painter Giovanni Boldini was also taken by her beauty and captured her on canvas and paper several times. An opportunity to acquire one of those drawings is coming up on 28 September when Bonhams New Bond Street, London will be auctioning a magnificent, signed, black chalk portrait, 12.5 x 19.5cm, in their sale of 19th Century European, Victorian and British Impressionist Art. The estimate is €29,000 to €41,000, so take your chequebook.
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Edgar Degas: The Supreme Painter Of The Ballet
In the late 1800s, the famous impressionist painter went often to the Paris Opéra Ballet to watch dancers and draw them, usually capturing the dancers in repose. Although he painted the female body in many other guises—as bathers, singers and even prostitutes, he returned again and again to the ballet. When you see his tutu clad dancers, now part of an expansive exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, you realize the fantasy and detail he poured into those paintings.

Dancers preparing for performance.
Frieze of Dancers, 1895.
Three ballet dancers, monotype, 1878-90.
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