[Sainte Vierge]. by LYDIS, Mariette.

Hand-coloured lithograph (407 × 340 mm), signed and dated on mount, with limitation. In ?original Leicester Gallery gilt frame, wooden back with Leicester Gallery label.

Number 9 of 100 copies of a separately-issued lithograph, coloured by the artist and exhibited at London’s Leicester Gallery in 1935. A reviewer in The Connoisseur wrote of that exhibition:
‘February’s triple bill at the Leicester Galleries began with a display of paintings, drawings and prints by Mariette Lydis, a Viennese, domiciled in Paris. She has been a prolific illustrator. No fewer than thirty volumes with drawings by her have been published, copies of which have been acquired by many of the principal national libraries. Her work may be seen in the public galleries of Paris — the Jeu du Paume and the Luxembourg — of Milan, Amsterdam, Vienna, Leipzig, and elsewhere. She has also been accorded the honour of having a self-portrait received in the Uffizi Gallery. Her travels have taken her all over Europe, to America and to Morocco, and she is said to be entirely self-taught.
In the drawings, which seem to be mainly studies or projects, her attitude, and quite rightly, appears to be objective. Often her subjects are viewed as so much still-life, but they show considerable delicacy, if not variety, in handling. Her paintings evince, especially in such subjects as the dream-like Nuages, more of imagination and more of sensibility. Sainte Vierge Enfant has a pleasant cameo-like quality, and Javanaise, considerable attractiveness. For ourselves, we find her most interesting in her etchings and lithographs. A series of the latter, entitled L’Art d’Aimer and the map like Oracle, are both imaginative and original’.