RARE! "Erté" Romain de Tirtoff Clipped Signature

Up for auction a  RARE! "Erté" Romain de Tirtoff Clipped Signature.

ES-726

Romain

de Tirtoff  (23 November 1892

– 21 April 1990) was a  Russian -born  French   artist  and designer known by

the  pseudonym   Erté , from the French pronunciation of

his initials (pronounced  [ ɛʁ .te] , AIR TAY). He was a 20th-century artist and

designer in an array of fields, including  fashion ,  jewellery ,  graphic arts ,  costume  and  set design  for film, theatre, and opera, and  interior decor . Tirtoff was born  Roman Petrovich

Tyrtov  ( Роман Петрович Тыртов ) in  Saint Petersburg , to a distinguished family with roots tracing

back to 1548, to a  Tatar   khan  named Tyrtov. His father, Pyotr Ivanovich Tyrtov,

served as an admiral in the  Russian Fleet . In 1907, he lived one year in  Paris .

He said about this time "I did not discover  Beardsley  until when I had already been in Paris for a

year". Demoiselle à la balancelle  is one of Erté's first

sculptures, if not the first. Made in 1907, at the age of 15 years, during a

stay in Paris. This work is less precise than his other sculptures, but

still  Art Nouveau . Erté

considered this so minor and uninteresting that it does not appear in his

official biography, but the cartouche on the back indicates 'ERTE PARIS 1907',

in a triangle. In 1910–12, Romain moved to Paris to pursue a career as a

designer. In Paris he lived with Prince Nicolas Ouroussoff (December 17, 1879 –

April 8, 1933) up until the prince's death in 1933. [3]  The decision to move to Paris was made despite

strong objections from his father, who wanted Romain to continue the family

tradition and become a naval officer. Romain assumed his pseudonym to avoid

disgracing the family. He worked for  Paul Poiret  from 1913 to 1914. In 1915, he secured his

first substantial contract with  Harper's Bazaar  magazine, and thus launched an

illustrious career that included designing costumes and stage sets. During this

time, Erte designed costumes for the  Mata Hari . [4] Between 1915 and 1937, Erté designed over 200 covers

for  Harper's Bazaar , and his illustrations would also appear in

such publications as  Illustrated London News ,  Cosmopolitan ,  Ladies' Home Journal ,

and  Vogue. Erté is perhaps

most famous for his elegant fashion designs which capture the  art deco  period in which he worked. One of his earliest

successes was designing apparel for the French dancer  Gaby Deslys  who died in 1920. His delicate figures and

sophisticated, glamorous designs are instantly recognisable, and his ideas and

art still influence fashion into the 21st century. His costumes, programme

designs, and sets were featured in the  Ziegfeld Follies  of 1923, many productions of the  Folies Bergère ,  Bal Tabarin ,  Théâtre Fémina ,  Le Lido [6]  and  George White's Scandals . On

Broadway, the celebrated French chanteuse  Irène Bordoni  wore Erté's designs. In 1925,  Louis B. Mayer  brought him to Hollywood to design sets

and costumes for the silent film  Paris . There were many script problems, so Erté was given

other assignments to keep him busy. Hence, he designed for such films as  Ben-Hur ,  The Mystic ,  Time ,  The Comedian ,

and  Dance Madness . In 1920

he designed the set and costumes for the film  The Restless Sex  starring  Marion Davies  and financed by  William Randolph Hearst . By

far, his best-known image is  Symphony in Black , depicting a

somewhat stylized, tall, slender woman draped in black holding a thin black dog

on a leash. The influential image has been reproduced and copied countless

times. Erté

continued working throughout his life, designing revues, ballets, and operas.

He had a major rejuvenation and much lauded interest in his career during the

1960s with the Art Deco revival. He branched out into the realm of limited

edition prints, bronzes, and  wearable art . Two years

before his death, Erté created seven limited edition bottle designs for  Courvoisier  to show the different stages of the

cognac-making process, from distillation to maturation. [10]  In 2008, the eighth and final of the remaining

Erte-designed Courvoisier bottles, containing Grande Champagne cognac dating

back to 1892, was released and sold for $10,000 apiece.