This work has been previously authenticated by Jane Roberts, and it is included in her digital Jacques-Émile Blanche catalogue raisonné as no. RM 919.Provenance:Bury Street Gallery, LondonPrivate Collection, England, purchased from the above before 1985Sold: Christie's, London, December 14, 2023, Lot 57Acquired by the present owner from the above saleExhibited:Paris, Palais de Champs-Élysées, 102e Salon de la Société des artistes français, May 1884, no. 248Literature:James Tissot, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, 1985, p. 70, fig. 23, illus., (as Intérieur anglais, thé et musique)Lot essay:Intérieur à Londres is an exceptional, yet somewhat mysterious, scene depicting a musical gathering of society ladies within a London drawing room. Painted in 1884 by the then 23-year-old Jacques-Emile Blanche, it was likely executed in the Paris studio of his teacher Henri Gervex. At a young age, Blanche had already formed an attachment to England when he was sent to London at the age of 9 at the onset of the Franco-Prussian War. He traveled with his Scottish governess, Ellen Maclaren, and they took up residence at Walton Place in Chelsea near the French embassy. His affluent family provided Blanche invitations to society gatherings at the homes of exiled French aristocrats. London was to eventually become the artist’s second home.Eventually returning to France, the young Blanche began his artistic studies with Edmond MaÎtre in 1874. It was MaÎtre who introduced Blanche to Edouard Manet, who he came to deeply admire. Blanche was to go on to form many friendships with the artistic luminaries of the late 19th century, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Paul-César Helleu, and Giovanni Boldini. Then in 1882, on a trip to London, he met his absolute 'idol,’ James McNeill Whistler, as well as his life-long friend, Walter Sickert. On these trips to London, often with his French artistic compatriots, Blanche acted as a sort of tour guide to the city.It was on a June 1882 trip that Blanche and Helleu visited the artist James Tissot who took them on an improvised picnic to Sydenham. Tissot, who came from a wealthy family in Nantes, who had moved to London in 1871, lived in incredible luxury in his grand house at 17 Grove End Road in St John’s Wood, in North London. He had become very famous and very rich in England, painting genre scenes and portraits, inundated with commissions and provided an essential link between the establishment and young artists such as Blanche.Intérieur à Londres reveals the influence of Tissot, with its languorous females and the woman serving tea who looks directly at the viewer. The London interior in which the eight young women listen to music was likely invented by the artist. The room is decorated with two kakemonos hanging on the back wall and Oriental-flavored furniture, a nod to fashionable Japonisme, as well as a grand piano and an assortment of wicker chairs, all of which were in Blanche’s studio in Auteuil. The tea service, with its distinct samovar, was Blanche’s and appears in many of his still life subjects. Beyond this room to the right, there is a glimpse of a conservatory, and from the window on the left, are seen London townhomes and a smoking chimney. The red-haired woman to the right who serves tea is Ellen André (1857-1925), who also modeled for Blanche in Contemplation, 1882. She wears the same bonnet and puff-sleeved dress that she is dressed in Femme au bord d’un yacht (Ponce Museum, catalogue raisonné no. 497), Blanche’s first successful Salon picture of 1881. To her left and in profile is Henriette Chabot, a favorite model of Blanche who posed in 1882 for the Partie de tennis, his largest and most ambitious work at the beginning of his career, as well as many other paintings. The artist used these two models, André and Chabot, as the basis for the other six women in the background. These figures who occupy the dark, slightly exotic interior, appear slightly diaphanous in their delicately pastel dresses, Pre-Raphaelite hair, and indifferent gazes and together produce an overall air of inscrutable mystery.