This is the first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time: the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola, whose brilliant, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art. Balthus s complexities are clarified and his genius understood in this book that derives its immediacy from Nicholas Fox Weber s long and intense conversations with Balthus himself who never previously consented to discuss his life and work with a biographer as well as Weber s interviews with the artist s closest associates. This biography was first published by Knopf in 1999 and is now available for the first time from Dalkey Archive Press.".