Rating and value of paintings by Clémentine Hélène Dufau

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Rating and value of the artist Clémentine Hélène Dufau  

Clémentine Hélène Dufau is an artist known to lovers of impressionist canvases and still lifes of flowers. Now, prices for her works are rising under auctioneers' gavels.

Her oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by French buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €20 to €41,000, a significant delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2006, his oil on canvas La famille admirant la vue du port,dating from 1925, sold for €41,000, while it was estimated at between €45,000 and €50,000. Its value is stable.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Clémentine Hélène Dufau    

Clémentine Hélène Dufau mainly produces posters and paintings, close to the Art Deco current, using mostly depictions of women and children. She thrives as a portraitist.

Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Gustave Moreau's studio, she develops a precise, rigorous drawing style, inherited from the French academic tradition. Her work retains the codes of classical realism (modeling, anatomy, narrative composition) but is also enriched by a poetic, allegorical and sometimes mystical imagination.

She is in a decorative and literary vein close to Puvis de Chavannes, but also the early Viennese Secession or Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. Dufau was very comfortable with large-format murals, and produced ambitious compositions (public decors, state commissions, allegorical panels) with a clear, hieratic composition.

She used a soft, refined palette, often dominated by pink tones, pale greens, ochres and celestial blues. Contours are sharp, shapes outlined, but the treatment of light remains diffuse, almost unreal (giving her figures a timeless presence.

Dufau works a great deal with idealized, sensual female figures, slender bodies and calm faces, often pensive or absent, in a posture of contemplation or expectation.

The female figure often embodies spiritual, literary or symbolic values for her (muse, enigma, inspiration). She combines the elegance of line with a tender regard for bodies, evoking a hushed sensuality.

She also incorporates a decorative dimension and an Art Nouveau influence into her work, paying special attention to soft lines and stylized plant elements, even if she remains more attached to classical structure.

The decors she paints are rich in flowers, fabrics, jewels and drapery that frame and exalt the human figure. Her work is characterized by an overall harmony, where each element (figure, background and object) is integrated into an ornamental balance.

Her painting is often intended to be meditative, introspective, with a spiritual, literary or theosophical background asserted in her later works. She does not paint everyday life but states of mind and mental visions in a search for pure beauty and elevation.

This tension between formal realism and lyrical idealization constitutes the whole originality of her pictorial language.

The career of Clémentine Hélène Dufau  

Clémentine Hélène Dufau (1869 - 1937) was a French artist born in Gironde.

Sick as a child, she was forced to remain immobilized for long periods and developed a strong interest in drawing. Her parents supported her passion and decided to follow her to Paris to take drawing classes. She took classes in Bouguereau's studio at the Académie Julian.

She exhibited her work at the Salon des Artistes Français, and developed close ties with French artists, including the theater community, for which she produced a number of sets.

She gradually developed a career as an illustrator, and produced many posters during her career - hence the number of prints circulating on the market. After moving to Antibes, she became interested in the esoteric tradition, which played an important role in her work.

She died of cancer in Paris at the age of 67.

Today, she is a sought-after painter alongside other artists such as Virginie Demont Breton, Berthe Morisot or Anna Boch.

Focus on L'Énigme, Clémentine Hélène Dufau, circa 1900

Dufau produced this canvas, which is now on display at the Musée d'Orsay, at the very beginning of the 20th century. In monumental format (215 x 145 cm), l'Énigme was commissioned for an exhibition and reproduced several times. It is one of Dufau's best-known works and a veritable manifesto of his Symbolist style.

It depicts a nude woman seated on a stylized cloth or rock, her body in a three-quarter position, her head turned in profile and her arms crossed over her chest. Her gaze is lost, and the expression on her face is meditative or even absent, as it is closed.

There is no precise narrative setting in this work: the figure is isolated in an undefined space, between dream and abstraction. The modeling is supple and sculptural, at once realistic (in body volumes) and idealized (in the purity of lines).

The flesh is rendered in subtle gradations of pinks, beiges and blues, giving the body an almost diaphanous dimension. Contours are sharp but shapes are melted into the light, and there is no apparent texture : the surface is smooth and flat, creating an effect of visual silence.

The background is undefined, in pale, milky tones, with no horizon or identifiable object. The space thus becomes psychic or spiritual. The whole is bathed in a diffused light, erasing depth to focus attention on the single figure.

The overall effect of the work is to suspend temporality and evoke an interior scene where reality yields to suggestion. The work therefore reads like an allegory of the feminine enigma, without an explicit key.

There is no narrative or mythological element; the figure itself becomes the message, in its withdrawal and silent density. Expression is deliberately impenetrable, inviting open meditation on being, soul, beauty and absence.

L'Énigme thus synthesizes several aspects of her research : the idealized female nude, withdrawal from the world, and the spiritualization of painting. Her work becomes both decorative and philosophical, and claims the power of evocation without narration.

By its format and sobriety, the work stands out in the art of its time as a modern proposal of feminine symbolism.

Clémentine Hélène Dufau's imprint on her period

Clémentine Hélène Dufau left her mark on 19th-century art, and today is a little-known butdemanded artist.

Her works are quite rare at auction and could therefore reach unprecedented amounts.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Clémentine Hélène Dufau does not necessarily sign her works. Copies may exist, which is why expertise remains important.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by Clémentine Hélène Dufau or after the artist, don't hesitate to request a free valuation using our form on our website.

A member of our team of experts and licensed auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, not forgetting to send you ad hoc information about it.

If you're thinking of selling your work, our specialists will also be on hand to offer you alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account market inclinations.