Art Deco era French portrait of a female nude. Oil painting on canvas. Featuring a nude woman in a seated pose, her short bobbed hair so popular of the roaring 1920's. Signed lower right Fransissi L. In a gilded wood frame. Frame measures 18 5/8" x 14 5/8" x 1 7/8" deep. Canvas measures 15 3/4" x 11 7/8". Titled on the back 'Héléna' and dated 1927. A notation on the back indicates this is a portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse. Born Alice Ernestine Prin (1901-1953), nicknamed the Queen of Montparnasse, and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French artist’s model, literary muse, nightclub singer, actress, memoirist and painter. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the 1920s. In the words of Ernest Hemingway “she was wonderful to look at. Her face being naturally pretty, she had turned it into a work of art. She had a prodigiously beautiful body and a pleasant voice.” As the great muse of so many artists, Kiki has come to symbolize everything that Montparnasse offered: strength and vulnerability, freedom and decadence. An iconic image of Kiki is the famed Le Violon d'Ingres photograph, which shows Kiki's nude back overlaid with the f-holes found on a violin.