Female Nude

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 73 x 54 cm (28.7 x 21.3 in)
Signed: Signed bottom left: L. Levy-Dhurmer

In 1895, a show at the Petit Gallery, Paris, of around 25 pastel and 5 paintings, instantly established Lévy-Dhurmer’s reputation in Paris. One critic exclaimed “a youth, a debutant and also a master,” asking rhetorically if the artist was “Symbolist, Mystic, or Romantic.” Another critic likened him to “da Vinci, Botticelli and Memling, the ancients, the moderns…” Lévy-Dhurmer continued working as a celebrated portraitist, draughtsman, pastelist and painter of religious, genre, symbolist and landscape paintings until the second World War.

Large scale gallery shows were organized to celebrate Lévy-Dhurmer’s career in 1927, and again in 1937; upon the artist’s death in 1952 a retrospective exhibition was organized by the French Museums in Paris. More recently again, a further exhibition was organised by the Louvre at the Grand Palais in 1973, Autour de Lévy-Dhurmer, to celebrate the acquisition of a group of major pastels now hanging in the Musée d’Orsay.