Hot new artist: Nathanaëlle Herbelin, softness in painting

By Anya Harrison.

Published on 22 June 2025. Updated on 7 July 2025.

Nathanaëlle Herbelin, a painter who seizes on tradition

Known primarily for her portraits of family and friends, who she captures in moments of reverie or intimacy and identifies only by their first names – Madeleine and Clément (2021), Yeonathan (2021), Imad (2022) – Nathanaëlle Herbelin explores other scenes and situations with equal zeal: still lifes, landscapes, and empty interiors where human presence is invisible but palpable, such as Dernier dîner à la rue Ordener, 2024, which shows a table strewn with empty bottles, as though the guests had only just left.

Her work “is part of the great tradition of 19th-century French painting, but remains resolutely contemporary,” explains art advisor Philippe Ségalot, citing last year’s exhibition Être ici est une splendeur at the Musée d’Orsay, which created a dialogue between her work and the Nabis. “The computer, air conditioner, or blender subtly inserted into her works remind us that we are indeed in the 21st century, lest their classicism make us forget it.”

Contemporary and timeless frescos

This classicism permeates every aspect of the Franco-Israeli’s oeuvre. “Her process of preparing canvases and panels with rabbit-skin glue, her silky brushwork, and her range of pastel tones give her works a fresco-like quality that adds to their timelessness and makes them immediately recognizable,” underlines Ségalot who, with the help of the Jousse Entreprise Gallery, presented a selection of Herbelin’s paintings in October 2021 “in the faded interiors of the Hôtel de Guise in Paris, where the clocks stopped ticking a Iong long ago.”

Nathanaëlle Herbelin is represented by the Jousse Entreprise and Xavier Hufkens galleries.