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BOLETTE NATANSON Pair of 'NAUTILUS' LAMPs, CA

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:12,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
BOLETTE NATANSON Pair of 'NAUTILUS' LAMPs, CA
BOLETTE NATANSON Pair of 'NAUTILUS' LAMPs, CA. 1930 shell and painted metal (2) 173/4 in. (45.1 cm) high Estimate: $12,000-15,000 Provenance Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris Bolette Natanson (d. 1936) came from a prominent family in the Parisian art circles-her father and uncle had founded La Revue Blanche, an avant-garde and highly influential journal devoted to art and literary criticism. Natanson became an interior designer and often collaborated with Jean-Charles Moreux to create simple and classical spaces. However, she became famous for her extraordinary still-life tableaux in which she employed fossils, skeletons, and all manner of natural specimens. In 1930, she took over Le Cadre gallery in Paris and exhibited a series of shows on art and natural history. Four years later, Natanson exhibited a magnificent installation in her gallery of glass screens with pressed butterflies, a dreamlike depiction of a flowering field in the spring. Other nature morte compositions included Homage to Night featuring skeletal bats and flying fish amidst coral and starfish, and Monument to Insects in which butterflies and moths fluttered under a glass dome. An article in the January 1933 Arts and Decoration issue noted how popular such decorations were becoming and claimed that Natanson's pieces "have furnished true natures mortes of a lively beauty which has placed them in some of the best art collections in Paris." The lamps offered here are simpler, more restrained, perhaps meant as a marriage of Surrealism and Classicism.