Balthus

Private Collection (a gift from the artist circa 1950)
Sale: Christie's, London, 3rd July 1970, lot 265
Grosvenor Gallery, London
Elizabeth Berger, New York
Sale: Christie's, New York, 12th November 1992, lot 211
Nancy Schwartz Fine Art, New York
Elkon Gallery, New York
Galerie Gianna Sistu, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Virginie Monnier & Jean Clair, Balthus, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre complet, Paris, 1999, no. P122, illustrated p. 136

The board is stable and there is no retouching visible under UV light. This work is in good condition.
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Painted in 1939, Trois personnages dans un intérieur is the last painting for which the Blanchard children served as models. The Blanchards were Balthus' neighbours in the Cour de Rohan and their children posed for a series of works beginning in 1935, which ended with the artist being called up for service at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The young girl, in this case Thérèse Blanchard, at the centre of the present composition is typical of the dreaming and languid young girls which became a recurrent motif in Balthus's œuvre from the 1930s onwards (fig. 1).

FIG. 1, Balthus, Thérèse sur une banquette, 1939, oil on canvas, Private Collection