Influenced at the beginning of her career by the stylisation of Cubism and by the work of Picasso’s Black Period, Marie Laurencin (1885-1956) was involved with all the avant-garde movements of the period, and her picture “Apollinaire and his friends” of 1909 dates from her liaison with that poet. Later she moved towards a more decorative manner inspired by the “Nabis” group of painters that included Bonnard and Maurice Denis. Hard to confine to any school, her originality lies in her skill as a colourist of very subtle tones, her gentle naïveté and love of graceful adolescent faces.

For the 1948 Mouton Rothschild label she has drawn a pair of young bacchantes, endowing them with a typically childlike gravity.