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. The artist's complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its immediacy from the author'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 painter's closest associates. First published by Knopf in 1999, now available for the first time from Dalkey Archive Press.