Christophe Henri Karel de Nerée tot Babberich was born on 18 March 1880 into an aristocratic Dutch family at Babberich Manor, near the German border. His father, Frederik de Nerée tot Babberich (1851-1882), was a naval officer who met De Nerées mother, Constance van Houten (1858-1930), on Curaçao, a Dutch colony in the Caribbean. After her husband’s early death, Constance moved with her three young sons to The Hague where she became part of the artistic circle surrounding Jan Toorop. To supplement her income, she sold her artworks, primarily embroideries. While her oldest son was destined to look after Babberich, Constance was a fervent supporter of her two younger children’s artistic path.

At the age of fifteen, De Nerée attended business school in Antwerp, while enjoying the night life in Belgium. In 1898, he entered the Dutch Foreign Consular Service, and in the same year, he also began to pursue an artistic practice. His diplomatic career was short-lived: posted in Madrid, he contracted tuberculosis and left his post in 1901. The following five years, he moved between sanatoria in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, returning to the Netherlands during the summers. His last drawings date from 1906, after which his health rapidly declined. De Nerée died on 19 October 1909, aged only twenty-nine, in Todtmoos, a resort town in Bavaria’s Black Forest. He was buried in Clarens, near Montreux, Switzerland.

Although initially aspiring a literary career, De Nerée burned Bourgeoisie, his debut novel. His unpublished writings reveal an affinity with Baudelaire and Verlaine, but his true champion was Oscar Wilde, which drew him to Paris in 1900. An autodidact, De Nerée’s art aligns with the decadent and symbolist sensibilities of Fernand Khnopff and Odilon Redon, yet his closest artistic kinship is with Aubrey Beardsley, a highly unusual point of reference in the Netherlands around 1900.

De Nerée and Beardsley share striking similarities. Both were highly gifted, self-taught, intellectually erudite artists; both suffered from tuberculosis and experienced an intensification of religion on their deathbeds. In the work of each, early, middle, and late periods can be discerned, possibly partly explained by the progression of their illness. De Nerée’s drawings are far from an imitation of Beardsley’s; rather, they reveal a mysterious congeniality of mind, resulting in an audacity of line unequalled by any of his contemporaries.

De Nerée’s artistic output spans the brief period from 1898 to 1906, while his most compelling symbolist works were created between 1904 and 1906 when his illness was already advanced. During these two years, his drawings became increasingly chromatic, with bright colors and gold, reminiscent of Klimt and Moreau. Linear, graphic elements gave way to blocks of color, suggesting an early adaptation of abstraction.

Despite a prolific output within his short career, De Nerée never exhibited during his lifetime, reluctant to show his art to the conservative Dutch public. Although he occasionally sold work, mainly to German collectors, his estate comprised of hundreds of works. His work was first exhibited posthumously in 1910 in The Hague and in Amsterdam. This exhibition travelled throughout the Netherlands and Germany for the next four years, presenting more than one hundred drawings, the selection varying slightly by venue. First included in the Amsterdam 1910 exhibition, it is possible that the present drawing was included among the so-called Idealized Portraits in other iterations of the traveling show. Two studio sales in the 1930s dispersed the studio contents, but the absence of this Idealized Portrait supports the conclusion that it had already entered into a private collection.

Lack of titles and mysterious subjects make De Nerée a forerunner of modern art, while no lifetime gallery exhibitions complicate their identification. Formerly exhibited as an idealized portrait of Yvette Guilbert (1867-1944), the famous French femme fatale and muse to Toulouse-Lautrec, its glamorous stylized sitter remains a secret. With her pale complexion and long black gloves, the title may have been intended to differentiate the idealized portraits of the artist’s imagination as it remains unknown whether De Nerée ever saw Guilbert perform in Paris in 1900. His life, steeped in decadence and erotic entanglements, allowed for a highly sexually charged nature of his drawings. Other proposed sitters include Madame de S. (Kasarina de Schestoff), his mistress and fellow sanatorium patient in Switzerland, and “Do Kunst”, an as of yet unidentified lover.

New railways, combined with the influx of Swiss and international patients, contributed to the rapid expansion of health resorts at the turn of the century. The inscription “Asile des Enfants ♢♢♢ Soirée Chamossaire” suggests that the paper may have been produced for a fundraising event benefiting a children’s sanatorium that opened in Leysin in 1910. Chamossaire, one of De Nerées preferred resorts, provided an excellent environment to create a richly colored composition, perhaps an announcement for the charity night. A list of lovers kept by the artist attests to the idea that De Nerée was not deprived of sexual encounters and inspiration during his prolonged illness. De Nerée, the decadent dandy, was one of the most distinctive representatives of the fin de siècle sensibility.