WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 6 JUNE 2022 AT 6PM

68 48 Mela Muter (Polish, 1876-1967) STREET SCENE oil on panel signed lower left 17.50 by 12.50in. (44.5 by 31.8cm) Frame Dimensions: 20.5 by 15.5in. (52.1 by 39.4cm) With second painting of Church Saint-Didier, Avignon on reverse. Born into an influential family with strong artistic and cultural sensibilities in Warsaw in 1876, Maria Melania Klingsland made the most of her early-life advantages to become the first professional Jewish painter in Poland. While her career as an artist truly took flight after her move to Paris in 1901, she received a good grounding in her youth as her parents enrolled her in drawing and piano classes before she advanced her artistic studies at the School of Drawing and Painting for Women. She married the Socialist art critic Michal Mutermilch at the age of 23 before giving birth to their only son Andrzej in 1900. A year later the family of three would move to Paris, where Muter would continue her studies at the Académie Colarossi and Académie de la Grande Chaumiére. Her work, synonymous with the Naturalism movement, quickly became popular and within a couple of years she was exhibiting her work across the French capital, as well as in her native Poland. One of the original members of the Paris School, Muter’s travels across Europe saw her focus shift from landscapes to more character driven work, inspired by the people she saw and met. The First WorldWar would bring great upheaval in Muter’s personal life. While her husband was away fighting, she had an affair with the writer and activist Raymond Lefebvre. Divorced from Mutermilch, she cared for and lived with Lefebvre until his death in mysterious circumstances in Russia in 1920. During their time together, she adopted his political ideals, even producing pacifist artworks for Socialist publications. A year after converting to Christianity, Muter lost her son Andrzej to bone tuberculosis. Three years later, in 1927, she became a French citizen, before also gaining membership of the Sociéte Nationale des Beaux-Artes and the Sociéte des Femmes Artistes Modernes. During the Nazi occupation of France in WorldWar II she fled to Avignon and hid in the south of France. However sometime after the war ended, she was unable to work due to sight issues, rectified with surgery in 1965. By that stage, a retrospective of her work had already been held in Paris in 1953. However, with her sight restored, she returned to painting and exhibited in Cologne, New York, and Paris. Muter died in her studio in 1967, at the age of ninety-one. €15,000-€20,000 (£12,820-£17,090 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot48