Jeanne Roques, known as Musidora 1889-1957

Briefly signed “Musidora,” this small drawing constitutes a rare testament to the drawn work of one of the most important stars of French cinema in the 1910s. Born Jeanne Roques in 1889 in Paris to a modest family of artists, her parents, a composer and a writer, instilled in her values of freedom and modernity in which art played a central role. Initially drawn to drawing and painting, Jeanne pursued studies at the Beaux-Arts de Paris before discovering her true vocation in the theater.

Performing in numerous roles at the Folies Bergères, she adopted the name “Musidora,” a nickname borrowed from Théophile Gautier’s work Fortunio. It was during one of these performances that Louis Feuillade noticed her in 1913. Captivated, particularly by her eyes, he brought her into the Gaumont studios, where they would collaborate on some thirty highly successful silent “vaudeville” films. In 1915, Musidora triumphed on screen as Irma Vep, the sultry heroine of the new serial Les Vampires. Her figure, clad in a black silk outfit by Paul Poiret, immediately captivated audiences.

Musidora quickly became a myth: “the tenth muse” of André Breton, father of the Surrealists, who saw in her the image of the modern woman. By combining seduction and cruelty, Irma Vep immediately embodied the archetype of what would later be called the “femme fatale,” a persona Musidora, guided by Louis Feuillade, would continue to cultivate both on screen and in life. Beautiful, sensual, and daring, she defied gender boundaries by dressing as both boy and girl on screen and by undertaking the most dangerous missions. A friend of Colette, Pierre Louÿs, and Marcel L’Herbier, she began directing her own films in 1916, becoming the third female filmmaker in France alongside Alice Guy and Germaine Dulac.

Her growing fame led her, in 1919, to create the Société des Films Musidora with press magnate Félix Juven. In a society shaken by the stalemate of the First World War, Musidora was elevated to the status of living myth, leaving a lasting impression on multiple generations with her distinctive silhouette and large dark eyes, securing her place in the collective memory.

Quickly captured in charcoal by Musidora herself in the very year she founded her production company, this striking small self-portrait conveys everything that made the young thirty-year-old actress and filmmaker unique and successful. While Irma Vep’s body crystallized the artistic and aesthetic concerns of the era, Musidora’s photogenic ideal, a pale face pierced by large, expressive black eyes, long concentrated the aspirations of a nascent French cinema.