EDMUND DULAC (BRITISH 1882-1953)

This watercolour is one of a series of four drawings used to illustrate the poem Venise by Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), published in the special Christmas issue of the magazine L’Illustration in December 1912. In each of the illustrations the artist's wife, Elsa Bignardi, is the model, dressing for a masked ball, waiting for her lover in an archway beside the water, masked in a group of figures in the present drawing, and in the final work, reclining with her lover in a gondola. These are some of the last of Dulac's works using the distinctive rich dark blue tonality we see here.