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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Robert and Nicolas Descharnes.
Portrait de Sara María Larrabure is a luminous and sumptuously crafted painting by Salvador Dalí in which he combines his remarkable skill at capturing a likeness with the depiction of an enigmatic dreamscape, so typical of his most famous works. The sitter, Sara María Larrabure, was a writer and important figure within the modernist Peruvian group of intellectuals known as the 'Generación del 50'. Dalí had apparently first met her in the St. Regis hotel in New York in February 1962 and, after receiving the commission to paint her portrait, he completed it the following year. Larrabure was known to have been a particularly cultured and refined woman and, in this stunning depiction of her, Dalí captures all the ethereal elegance of her beauty. Her figure is dressed in shimmering, almost floatingly light, gold-trimmed clothes that reveal the allure of her bare shoulders. Although she is clearly affluent, in her face and in her eyes -- turned to look beyond the viewer -- there is something serene and almost otherworldly. Dalí's naturalistic handling of his sitter contrasts with the imaginary landscape behind her which, along with the calligraphically rendered trees, contains the figure of an angel. Overhead, the dramatically painted storm clouds are parted and bright light illuminates her. Sara María Larraburre died in 1962, making the interpretation of the details in this remarkable work all the more poignant.
Portrait de Sara María Larrabure is a luminous and sumptuously crafted painting by Salvador Dalí in which he combines his remarkable skill at capturing a likeness with the depiction of an enigmatic dreamscape, so typical of his most famous works. The sitter, Sara María Larrabure, was a writer and important figure within the modernist Peruvian group of intellectuals known as the 'Generación del 50'. Dalí had apparently first met her in the St. Regis hotel in New York in February 1962 and, after receiving the commission to paint her portrait, he completed it the following year. Larrabure was known to have been a particularly cultured and refined woman and, in this stunning depiction of her, Dalí captures all the ethereal elegance of her beauty. Her figure is dressed in shimmering, almost floatingly light, gold-trimmed clothes that reveal the allure of her bare shoulders. Although she is clearly affluent, in her face and in her eyes -- turned to look beyond the viewer -- there is something serene and almost otherworldly. Dalí's naturalistic handling of his sitter contrasts with the imaginary landscape behind her which, along with the calligraphically rendered trees, contains the figure of an angel. Overhead, the dramatically painted storm clouds are parted and bright light illuminates her. Sara María Larraburre died in 1962, making the interpretation of the details in this remarkable work all the more poignant.