Masterpiece: Consuelo De Saint Exupery -Wife of Antoine - Abstracted Mountains, Mexico, 1958 Important Oil on Board

Own a piece of history - an important original oil on board painting by Consuelo de Saint Expuéry, widow of Antoine ("The Little Prince").

Consuelo de Saint Exupéry, officially Consuelo Suncín, comtesse de Saint Exupéry (10 April 1901 in Armenia, El Salvador – 18 May 1979 in Grasse, France) was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and the wife of the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).

As the daughter of a rich coffee grower and army reservist, she grew up in a family of wealthy landowners in a small town in the Salvadoran department of Sonsonate. Due to her asthma, her father sent her abroad to the United States, where she studied in San Francisco; later she studied in Mexico City, and also in France. Her first marriage was to a Mexican army captain, Ricardo Cardenas, whom she met in the United States. Though this marriage ended in divorce, she lied and said it ended with his death during the Mexican Revolution, since divorced women were then stigmatized by society, and being a widow was preferable to being a divorced woman.[While in France, she met and later married Enrique Gómez Carrillo, a Guatemalan writer, diplomat and journalist. Following his death in 1927, she took up residence in Buenos Aires.

In 1931, she met and married the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, making her a countess. At the time Consuelo was twice-widowed Sand possessed a bohemian spirit and was known as a mischief-maker. Saint-Exupéry, thoroughly enchanted by the diminutive woman, would leave and then return to her many times; she was both his muse and over the long term the source of much of his angst.

Consuelo was an accomplished artist, exhibiting notably in 1958 at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, the almost mystical art dealers who had represented Bonnard, Cézanne,Dufy, Utrillo...

The painting here on offer dates from circa 1958, and may well have figures in the above exhibition! Consuelo sojourned in Cuernavaca, Mexico, that year, where she did a series of paintings depicting the city's mountain ranges in abstracted form. Ours is one of them

Touchingly, our painting bears the artist’s full address in Paris on the backing board. It is likely that that she shipped it herself to a collector – on 12-12-1959.

The artwork is in good original vintage condition. There is a minor tear on the upper edge and a closed pinprick hole, as documented on a photo. The painting measures 74 x 104 cm and is signed at the lower right.

Overall dimensions with a narrow wooden frame are 79 x 109 cm.

Nous parlons français, und wir sprechen auch Deutsch! Paintings may be viewed in Norwich and in Paris, as well as in London and Cambridge by appointment. Please contact us if you would like further details and images of an artwork.