Beschreibung:

ENGELSEN, MAY DEN. A watercolor three-quarter portrait of Harry Crosby looking pensive, 176 x 125 mm, watercolor over pencil, [Paris, 1927,] signed lower right "May den Engelsen," and titled n pencil upper right "Harry," annotated to the verso, "Harry Crosby by Mai den Engelsen," light foxing.
RARE PORTRAIT FROM LIFE OF HARRY CROSBY, by Parisian artist May den Engelsen, famous for her erotic portrayals.
Mai den Engelsen and her husband artist Frans de Geteere lived on their barge Marie-Jeanne, moored on the Seine alongside Le Vert Galant right in the center of Paris. She provided erotic illustrations for Baudelaire's Pièces Condamnées, Verlaine's Les Amies and Alfred de Musset's Gamiani ou deux nuits d'excès during the 1920s, among others. They met Harry and Caresse Crosby in early 1927, and immediately became inseparable. Harry wrote to his mother, "If it is possible for two people to be in love with two people then we are in love with them." Den Engelsen's stylized portrait of Caresse appears as the frontispiece in her 1927 The Stranger published by Editions Narcisse.