Paul Helleu, the smart 1900 dry-point artist and painter, loved female beauty to the extent of hardly portraying any man throughout his whole career but a few noted friends such as Proust, Montesquiou, Goncourt, Boldini and Whistler, wishing to be exclusively named peintre de jolies femmes. A portraitist in vogue when elegance was fashionable, ladies' garments were one of the charms in his work, his sitters being always finely attired, often in striking hats, gloves, furs, muffs, and counting amongst the loveliest socialites of the time. Those gracious women whose poise irresistibly attracted him were rendered on paper or canvas in his effective style of great distinction. Helleu meant fashion, was fashion, set fashion: he created his own type of woman, la femme Helleu. He also favoured other themes, the gardens of Versailles, sea-scapes, cathedrals, yacht races, his own children and family enjoyments, still lives and flowers, hydrangeas, lilies, peonies, carnations, though less known than the feminine portraits which made his reputation, and fortune, with unending success over the Belle Epoque. Helleu did not neglect the nude, either, but only kept the issue to himself as private studies. Compared to the flow of his modish subjects, these nudes are quite unfrequent nowadays, most of them rapid sketches traced with a confident hand — occasionally pastels — in which he turned to fresh use a traditional colour combination of French 18th century drawings, the trois crayons. Particularly he adored red-haired women, for whom he had a passion related, possibly, to his choice of this graphic technique — black, white and red clay pencils — in which the sanguine vividness is so splendidly exalted. A worshipper of AngloSaxon beauty, this passion might also account, to