LONDON.- Christie’s King Street announced the sale of 19th Century European & Orientalist Art, to take place on 9 December. Featuring significant paintings from distinguished private collections, the sale will offer a strong selection Orientalist works by Italian Artists, as well as important works by Austrian, German, French, Italian and Scandinavian artists, including works from the Barbizon group and a selection of African Wildlife paintings. Highlights include two truly elegant paintings such as Madame Helleu à son bureau by French painter Paul-César Helleu (estimate: £200,000 – 300,000) and Interior with the artist’s wife by Danish artist Carl Vilhelm Holsøe (estimate: £50,000 – 70,000), which discerning collectors will not want to miss.

Paul-César Helleu (1859-1927) and his wife were known for their exquisite taste. The present lot depicts the artist's wife seated at a secrétaire in the couple's drawing room of their Paris apartment, into which they moved in 1888. The Helleu home soon became noted for its decor: walls dressed in various shades of white and hung with 18th century drawings by artists such as Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard (an influence revealed in Helleu's own extensive use of red chalk) and works by contemporaries such as Manet and Degas; a mix of fine 18th century and Empire furniture; and a variety of oriental works which reflected the vogue for Japonisme, such as the porcelain koi carp hanging in the upper left corner. The desk in the present lot features in numerous works by the artist's and is still in the artist's family; the painting hanging above it is Boldini's Leda and the Swan.

This painting cannot be considered a portrait in the conventional sense, but rather an interior still life, in which the furniture and surroundings are as integral as the sitter. In its subject and palette, Helleu's painting is superficially similar to the interior paintings of his Danish contemporary, Vilhelm Hammershoi, which depicted his wife Ida, often from behind, in the interior of their Copenhagen home. The overall effect, however, could not be more different: whereas the latter's works convey a sense of solitude and melancholy, which are conveyed in muted tones and pools of light, Helleu's paintings are executed in a much higher key, with strong brushwork, flashy reflections and exuberant tonal contrasts, which exude panache and confidence. Helleu's painting can almost be described as a Whistlerian symphony of whites (indeed Whistler was vocal in his admiration of the Helleus' interior colour scheme). The strongly vertical axis of the composition is reinforced by the shape of the desk, the legs of the chairs, and Mme Helleu's upright pose, but softened by the loose brushwork, shimmering reflections and muted colours, and the shock of the bright pink lampshade resting against the wall. The whole conveys the sense of easy, apparently informal, but ultimately artful, elegance which defined Helleu and his circle.

The painting by Vilhelm Holsøe (1863-1935) is an archetypal interior of a school of painting which also included the artist's friends and contemporaries, the brothers-in-law Vilhelm Hammershøi and Peder Ilsted. All three artists were members of "The Free Exhibition" a modernist art society established in Copenhagen at the end of the 19th century.

However, whereas Hammershøi’s oeuvre was characterised by a combination of asceticism and Symbolism, typically depicting sparsely furnished interiors executed in a muted palette of greys and whites, Holsøe’s paintings stressed the material qualities and richness of his domestic surroundings. These differences are apparent when comparing the present lot to a work by Hammershøi in the musée d’Orsay (fig. 2), which is strikingly similar in subject and composition. Whereas the latter is stripped down only to the essentials of chair, table and a platter, set against a bare wall, and executed in modulated ones which seem to absorb the light, the interior of Holsøe’s home is richly adorned, and rendered with more painterly brushstrokes, which emphasize the plasticity and reflective qualities of the objects depicted. Several of these appear in other paintings by the artist, and include a large 17th century Dutch landscape and the Chinese porcelain figurine on the side table or closed spinet. The silver platter recalls the Dutch still lives of artists such as Willem Kalf and, together with the porcelain vase which echoes the tones of the sitter’s neck, gently reflects the light pooling in from the window behind, resulting in a painting which is at once tangible and deeply contemplative.