75. Portrait of the Pianist Cella Delavrancea [1915-1916]

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75. Portrait of the Pianist Cella Delavrancea [1915-1916]

Eustaţiu Stoenescu

1885, Craiova - 1957, New York

Estimate:

EUR 6.000 - 10.000

Sold

EUR 12.000

oil on canvas, 141 x 107 cm, 107x141, signed lower right, in brown, "Stoenescu"

Research information

Opera a participat la a XVI-a expoziție a Societății Tinerimea Artistică, București, martie-aprilie 1916 și este menționată în catalogul expoziției la cat. 243, sub titlul "Portretul D-șoarei Cella Delavrancea". Eustațiu Stoenescu expunea atunci numai puțin de 43 de tablouri fiindu-i rezervată o întreagă sală de expunere, drept o micro-expoziție personală.

Her longevity and her unbridled passion for arts have turned Cella Delavrancea into an emblematic figure of the Romanian culture of the entire 20th century. The eldest daughter of Barbu Delavrancea, Cella has always known an intimate environment dedicated to all facets of culture, also shown by the path chosen by her younger sisters: Henrieta became an impeccable architect in the interwar period, Niculina was a painter appreciated by the collectors of the time, and Bebs was a member of the Sburătorul literary club. Her initiation in music and piano was given by her mother, the pianist Maria Lupașcu, but the passion of her childhood would become vocation and career as she studied at the Conservatory in Bucharest and Paris. Her literary debut was in Arghezi's magazine "Bilete de papagal" and she published her first book (of short stories) in 1946. She was no stranger to the world of fine arts, becoming close friends with two of the most important Romanian artists of interwar Paris. She met Constantin Brâncuşi in 1922, and even began a correspondence with Theodor Pallady, with romantic episodes, in the early 1930s. She would be introduced in the world of modern Romanian art, meeting Nicolae Grigorescu, whose works she could admire both in her parents' home and in those of her good friends Vlahuță and Caragiale. The rediscovery of the portrait made by Eustațiu Stoenescu gives us the opportunity to admire an exceptional painting, made in 1915-1916, when the artist was with the Delavrancea family. At the same time, the painter offered Niculina Delavrancea painting advice, as a private teacher, which materialised in 1915-1916, when the painter made her debut and was noticed at the exhibitions of the Artistic Youth. Perhaps it was also then that started the friendship between Stoenescu and the youngest daughter of the Delavrancea family, Henrieta, of whom he would paint a portrait about two decades later, in 1938.

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