Pair of 'Nautilus' Lamps, circa 1930

Born into a prominent and artistic family, Bolette Natanson (d. 1936) was destined to a creative life. Her father and uncle founded La Revue Blanche, an avant-garde and highly influential art and literary criticism journal. Natanson's career began as an interior decorator and she often worked with architect Jean-Charles Moreux, known for his classicist interiors. Natanson, however, found greater success in her still-life tableaux in which she incorporated fossils, shells, skeletons, and other natural specimen. Her work appears in periodicals such as Art et Industrie as early as 1930, illustrating her beautiful and mysterious surrealist creations. Her interest in naturalism carried over to her apartment, published in Art et Industrie in April 1932, showing her personal 'salle des aquariums' filled with rare fish and under the sea fauna. Her fascination continued into her bedroom where she placed a conch-shell inspired bed, showing her consuming passion.

In 1930, Natanson assumed control of the Parisian gallery, Le Cadre, which she referred to as a laboratory of renewal. Her exhibitions at Le Cadre reflected her surrealist interests as she curated shows on art and natural history. Her most famous exhibition, Les papillons, featured glass screens with pressed butterflies suspended in flight. Her popularity in Parisian art circles continued throughout the early 1930s; Art et Decoration wrote her designs "have furnished true natures mortes of a lively beauty which has placed them in some of the best art collections in Paris," in January 1933. The present lot is a lively and mystical example of Natanson's wondrous, surrealist creations.