Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957)

The present portrait is stylistically related to Tchelitchew's monumental masterpiece, and perhaps one of his most celebrated works, Hide-and-Seek, 1940-1942, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The sitter is Patricia Lopez-Wilshaw a well-known Parisian socialite and a great friend of the surrealist patron Marie-Laure de Noailles. Patricia was married to her cousin, the Chilean businessman Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw, the benefactor and lover of Baron Alexis de Rede, and was the great niece of Madame Eugenia Errazuriz, perhaps the greatest patron of modernism of the twentieth century. Like her great aunt, Patricia Lopez-Wilshaw was a considerable force in the fashion world, particularly during the late 1930s.