Boulevardier

New York's Reinhardt Galleries smelled of gardenias last week. There were a great many mink coats, and gentlemen carrying chamois gloves in their inverted bowlers. On the walls were brilliant, brittle portraits in flat, bright color of very smart people immaculately dressed, and decorative landscapes in which trees and houses were frankly drawn with ruler and compass. Bernard Boutet de Monvel was having his first New York exhibition in five years.

Pictures every child should know are in the series of oblong French story books which Maurice Boutet de Monvel, Bernard's father, illustrated nearly 50 years ago. The late Senator William Andrews Clark knew them well and commissioned Boutet de Monvel pere to do a long mural panel of Joan of Arc which was one of the most important objects in the amazing house he built on Fifth Avenue. Senator Clark's Joan is now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. As children Bernard and his brother Roger, now a writer, posed for that panel for hours in doublet & hose.* One of their most vivid childish recollections is the old copper tycoon's glittering gold teeth. As an artist, Bernard Boutet de Monvel absorbed everything but his father's sly sense of humor. Fifty years old. almost theatrically handsome, his life sounds like the day dreams of a Harvard freshman. During the War he served with distinction as an aviator in France, Macedonia. Morocco, where he had time to paint a number of most effective landscapes. He was decorated with the Legion of Honor, but, a sincere Royalist, he scorns the boutonniere as a relic of the Corsican upstart Napoleon. Shortly after the War he married Delfina Edwards-Bello, beautiful daughter of a wealthy Argentine. Their town house in Paris was the former studio of the late great Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, built on the site of an ancient convent, which Artist Boutet de Monvel has redecorated in a style which Artist Ingres would have liked to afford. Artist Boutet de Monvel lives amid beautiful women. Rich ones sit to him for their portraits, poor ones are models for the fashion plates he draws for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the Gazette de Bon Ton. Always impeccably dressed in public, he is sufficiently bohemian to paint in a blue-&-black striped blazer and patent leather pumps. He is fond of gold cigaret cases and dark red carnations with evening clothes. In Paris he lives very quietly. In New York, whither Mme Boutet de Monvel seldom comes, he has a cream-&-black duplex studio and entertains lavishly at the more expensive restaurants. His contemporaries and critics are as respectful of his talent as they may be envious of his life. One of the ablest of society portraitists, his style is his own, exactly suited for what he tries to do: make a record of decorative scenes, 20th Century chic.

*Senator Clark's son William Andrews Jr., older than the Boutet de Monvel children, is now patron of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (TIME, Oct. 31).

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