Cléo de Mérode By Boldini Painting by Paul Meijering

About "Cléo de Mérode By Boldini Painting"

by Paul Meijering

About the artwork

Realistic painting in acrylic by the Italian painter Giovanni Boldini with his portrait of the famous ballerina Cléo de Mérode , painted by the Dutch fine artist Paul Meijering - the original painting is 120 x 90 cm.

Giovanni Boldini (Ferrara, Dec. 31, 1842 - Paris, Jan. 12, 1931) was an Italian impressionist painter, eventually becoming especially famous as a portrait painter.

Boldini came from a well-known family of painters and received his first drawing lessons from his father and brother-in-law. From 1862 to 1868, he studied at the art academy in Florence. He developed a love for impressionism and painting in the open air. Initially, he painted many landscapes and genre pieces, working in an almost nervously sketchy manner.

Gradually, Boldini switched increasingly to portrait painting and displayed a particular talent for capturing the individual personality of his models. (In 1888, for example, he made two caricatures of Florentine writer Carlo Collodi.) Via London (from 1869), Boldini finally settled in Paris (1872) and there grew to become one of the best-known portrait painters of the belle époque, especially of the city's rich, famous and beautiful women. He was a flamboyant and welcome guest in the urban "beau monde," was in prominent artistic circles and was friends with Philip Alexius de László, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Paul César Helleu, Marcel Proust and Edgar Degas, among others.

Cléo de Mérode was a French variety dancer and ballerina and one of the most famous women of the belle époque.