Idbury Prints: An online gallery of original fine art prints

PAUL CESAR HELLEU (French / 1859-1927)

Paul César Helleu was born in Vannes, and went to Paris at the age of 17 to become an artist, studying at the Beaux-Arts under the academic painter Gérôme. Helleu was friendly with Monet, Rodin, Alfred Stevens, Whistler, and Sargent; Sargent painted a portrait of Helleu as a dandified aesthete, which is in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard. Paul César Helleu was also close to Marcel Proust, who based the character of Elstir in A la recherche du temps perdu on him. Helleu's greatest artistic mentor was J. J. Tissot, who gave his engraving diamond and other tools to the younger man, who used them to create hundreds of drypoints chronicling the elegant women of the Belle Époque.