Brioche Paintings

I like brioches.

I like smelling them, I like viewing them, I like gently squeezing them, I like tasting them.

I also like paintings of brioches. I found five plus one of them, by Chardin, Manet and Picasso.

The sequence begins with Chardin and continues with three brioche paintings by Manet. The fifth painting has oysters as its main subject, but there is one brioche on the side, so I included it. The Picasso painting completes the sequence.

La Brioche, Chardin, 1763, Oil on canvas

Dimensions: Height: 0.47 m; Height with frame: 0.58 m; Width: 0.56 m; Width with frame: 0.675 m

Musée du Louvre, Paris

The Brioche, Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

1870, Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. (65.1 x 81 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Manet reportedly called still life the “touchstone of the painter.” From 1862 to 1870 he executed several large-scale tabletop scenes of fish and fruit, of which this is the last and most elaborate. It was inspired by the donation to the Louvre of a painting of a brioche by Jean Siméon Chardin, the eighteenth-century French master of still life.

It seems natural that Manet, who lavished attention on the painterly quality of his pictures, should be attracted to the work of Chardin, a master of illusionistic texture. Although Manet made several large-scale still lifes of fruit and fish in the mid-1860s, this work, of 1870, was inspired by the arrival at the Louvre of Chardin’s painting of a brioche.

Like Chardin, Manet surrounded the buttery bread with things to stimulate the senses—a brilliant white napkin, soft peaches, glistening plums, a polished knife, a bright red box—and, in traditional fashion, topped the brioche with a fragrant flower.

Edouard Manet (1832–1883). Nature morte, brioche, fleurs, poires. 1876.

Manet’s brush is liberated from the constraints of the literal reproduction of reality.

Edouard Manet (1832–1883). Nature morte, huîtres, citron, brioche. 1876.

The brioche is on the right side of the picture. As in the previous picture, the artist is now depicting reality with a broader less precise brush.

Title: Still Life with Brioche (Nature morte à la brioche)

Artist: Edouard Manet, French, 1832–1883
Date: 1880
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: Work21 ¾ × 13 ⅞ in 55.24 × 35.24 cm
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Manet was keen on depicting brioches.

On 16 October, 1882, the aspiring young trainee painter Blanche was tasked with the “test ultime pour le peintre” while visiting Manet in his new studio at 77 rue d’Amsterdam, to paint an ordinary bun. “Bring me a brioche, I want to see you paint a brioche, if you can paint a brioche then you can call yourself a painter.”

Pablo Picasso, 1909, La Brioche (Nature morte à la brioche).

Painted in 1909

With Picasso there is not much to say, the world is turned upside down. But it is ok, as long as we can convince ourselves that what we see is a brioche.

Madonna and Child paintings by Botticelli and Raphael in Berlin

This post is about Madonna and Child paintings by Raphael and Botticelli in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie.

Raphael, Madonna with Child, St. John and a Child Saint (Madonna Terranuova)

Raphael, Madonna with Child, St. John and a Child Saint (Madonna Terranuova), ca. 1505, oil on poplar © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Photo N. Moropoulos

Of the five paintings of the Virgin Mary by Raphael owned by the Gemäldegalerie, the Madonna Terranuova (named for the collection from which it was acquired), which dates from circa 1505, and hence from the beginning of the artist’s Florentine period, is the largest and most monumental panel, and the only one in tondo form.

Together with the Madonna Connestabile (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage), which dates from 1504, it is one of Raphael’s earliest paintings in this format. It can be traced to an earlier pen-and-ink drawing by Raphael (Lille) from the earlier Umbrian period, which shows the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child with the young John the Baptist; here they are flanked by two background figures: an angel (Michael) and Saint Joseph. In the drawing, then, there was no space for a landscape. The drawing was later cut down, becoming semicircular above, and a large section is missing on the lower right, which originally showed the Christ Child’s legs, the Virgin’s lower left arm, and Joseph’s hand. Researchers regarded a contemporary copy of the drawing now in Berlin as preserving the original, pristine condition of the compositional drawing in Lille, but the differences between the two should not be overlooked.

In the Berlin drawing, the Virgin’s lower left arm emerges from her cloak, the hand open, in a way that resembles the painting. In the Lille drawing, in contrast, the cloak does not conceal Mary’s now visible upper arm. Similar deviations are noticeable with regard to Joseph’s hands. Given the deviations in the Berlin copy in relation to the original drawing, it cannot be simply assumed that the Berlin version reflects the missing parts of the original drawing in Lille. Instead, the Berlin drawing probably represents a different stage of compositional development, or may be a variant from the hand of an unknown Umbrian artist. A fragment of the cartoon showing the head of the Virgin is found in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (my note: see below). The pictorial conception corresponds to an Umbrian compositional schema dating from the late 15th century, one adopted by Raphael from Perugino (1493; Paris, Musée du Louvre) and adapted in the early Berlin panel (1502; no. 145).

After deciding to use the tondo form for the Madonna Terranuova, he omitted the flanking saints, which must now have seemed to him old-fashioned, dividing the background of the composition horizontally precisely at the lateral axis into a lower half, which is covered by a balustrade, and an upper half, which displays a landscape with an expansive sky, against which the head and shoulder contours of the Virgin are set off sharply. By juxtaposing the infant John the Baptist on the left with the figure of another, half-nude boy with halo on the right as a counterpart,

Raphael creates the type of pyramidal or triangular composition he would often use subsequently. Noticeable in the soft sfumato, the extroverted gestures, and the developed spatiality is the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, who had returned to Florence from Milan in 1503. His art made a deep impression on Raphael, who borrowed the motif of the Virgin’s gracefully outstretched left hand from Leonardo’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder (1501 ; the best version, possibly an original, is owned by the Duke of Buccleuch).

Raphael introduces this motif only during a later working stage. Infrared reflectography shows the initial preliminary drawing of the left-hand. It “was supposed to rest on the thigh, gently supporting the foot of the child” (J. Meyer zur Capellen 1994)| 200 Masterpieces of European Painting – Gemaldegalerie Berlin, 2019).

Head of the “Madonna Terranuova” (fragment of the cardboard), drawing, around 1505. Black pencil, heightened with white, stippled, on paper.

Despite the badly damaged, even fragmentary state of preservation, the outstanding quality of this drawing cannot be overlooked. The draughtsman created the tilted head of a young woman of particular delicacy with a black pen. This is an original-size drawing (a so-called cartoon), which apparently served to transfer this head to the picture support when a painting was being executed. This was done mechanically, namely by fingering through the most important lines, which also explains why the paper has suffered so much. Nonetheless, it is in the hand of Raphael, as it depicts the head of the so-called Madonna Terranuova (so named after the collection from which it was acquired), now housed in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. (DK 2019)

Raphael, Mary with the Child / Madonna Solly, painting, around 1500/1502

Raphael, Mary with the Child / Madonna Solly, around 1500/1502. Credit: National Museums in Berlin, Picture Gallery / Christoph Schmidt

In Raphael’s picture, the child’s head turn and line of sight are newly motivated by the book that Maria is holding out to him with her right hand and which she is reading herself: the book is the common focus of attention for mother and child. Raphael also follows Perugino’s Umbrian stylistic type of the half-length Madonna in front of a landscape with gentle hill contours that are enlivened by individual trees. But the approach to a psychological penetration and visualization of the interrelationship between mother and child is new, a first achievement of his more modern, more humane conception of art – he varied the motif of the book in a stylistically and temporally related Madonna picture (Los Angeles, Norton Simon Museum of Art ), to which various preliminary drawings refer, which were sometimes erroneously associated (as in the 1931 report) with the Madonna Solly.

A pen drawing by Raphael in the Louvre (no. 1607) is related to the latter. – The bird, which the child holds with a fine cord in the right and left hand, symbolizes the soul (cf. Rubens cat. no. 763) and, as a goldfinch eating thistles and thorns, points to the passion and resurrection of Christ. – A second, contemporary version (1961 in an Italian private collection) was published by Longhi as the original first version”. The latter, however, is merely a copy.* Perhaps the Madonna Dotallevi (Ident. No. 147) is the earliest.

The Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) is considered one of the most important artists of the Renaissance. Countless reproductions have been made of his works, with some creators adding a slant or “modern touch”, resulting in a work that has acquired a momentum and trajectory in its own right. Many of these re-workings are so removed from the originals that Botticelli has become a household name and can be used as a touchstone for fashion and lifestyle without any mention being made of his paintings. Products are named after him, popular-culture personalities allude to his motifs in fashioning their own image, and some of the characters portrayed in his works – particularly his “Venus” – are now firmly embedded in collective awareness.

Installation of the picture gallery in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, room 37, painting by Botticelli photography [1933 – 1939]. Credit: National Museums in Berlin, Central Archive

Sandro Botticelli “Mary with the Child and Singing Angels” (102A).- Sandro Botticelli “Saint Sebastian” (1128).- Sandro Botticelli, workshop “Giuliani de’ Medici” (106B).- Sandro Botticelli, workshop “Profile portrait of a young woman” (106A) Reason: reorganization of the collection

The Virgin and Child with Singing Angels (Raczyński Tondo)” was painted around 1480.

Sandro Botticelli The Virgin and Child with Singing Angels. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. Photo N. Moropoulos

Possibly the cyclorama belonged to the brothers of S. Francesco in Florence. Mary is crowned as the queen of heaven, and at the same time she is the compassionate mother of the Christ child destined for sacrifice. He grabs her breast. The nurturing Mary was considered by theologians to be the mother of all people and the giver of salvation. Singing angels praise her, holding lilies as symbols of purity. Just as one always looked for the ideal of earthly female beauty in the face and figure of Mary, so one can see in the angels the embodiment of youthful, harmonious proportions. Botticelli mastered the demanding format with a well thought-out pictorial arrangement that takes up the round of the boundary: the Madonna is enthroned in the center of multiple circling movements.| Prestel Museum Guide – Picture Gallery Berlin, 2017

Below you can see another picture by Botticelli, “Mary with the child and angels carrying candlesticks“painted around 1485/1490, which belonged to the collection of the Gemäldegalerie but is no longer there. Most probably it has been destroyed in May 1945 in the control tower of the anti-aircraft bunker in Berlin’s Friedrichshain..

Sandro Botticelli, Mary with the Child and angels carrying candlesticks – Credit: National Museums in Berlin, Picture Gallery / Gustav Schwarz

Edward Hopper: The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet, 1944

Edward Hopper is one of my favourite painters.

This is a post about Hopper’s painting of a sailing boat.

I quote from the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection expert’s report.

“Although, according to Jo Hopper’s notation in the record book, The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet represents a late August morning off Cape Cod and Hopper began this painting on 10 August, he did not complete the canvas until after he returned to New York in December 1944. Jo also recorded a subtitle, “Where Gulls Fill Their Gullets.” When Hopper was asked about the title of this painting by the publisher of a small monograph of his work, he responded emphatically: “I should like to retain the title ‘The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet’ if possible. The young lady that the picture is named after has taken us sailing in Wellfleet harbor so often that the title has a sentimental value for us and Martha McKeen also. The title was given purposely to please her and I think it would make her feel badly if it were to be changed. There is no vessel with this name as far as I know. It was named after our friend.”

Hopper was inspired to paint this and some of his other sailing pictures by sailing with Martha and Reggie McKeen of Wellfleet, a much younger couple. He had been forced to give up sailing on his own by Jo who thought it was too dangerous. While the canvas was in progress, the Hoppers also went to Provincetown so that he could study the gulls at a fish house on the railroad wharf. Jo felt that the man depicted at the tiller might be Hopper himself.

Ever since he built a catboat as a teenager, Hopper adored sailing. His love of solitude must have enhanced his enjoyment of sailing. He sketched numerous sailing boats as a boy in his hometown, Nyack, New York, a Hudson River port that had a shipbuilding industry during that time. The first painting he ever sold was Sailing the only work he exhibited in the famous New York Armory Show of 1913.

Although sailing boats appear in the oils he painted in Gloucester, the next action pictures occur in watercolour: The Dory, 1929 and Yawl Riding a Swell, 1935. The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet follows three other canvases of sailing scenes: The Long Leg, 1935; Ground Swell, 1939 and The Lee Shore, 1941. Each of these paintings utilises a horizontal strip of sky and sea, and sometimes land, parallel to the picture plane. Hopper’s only preparatory sketch for The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet reveals that he originally considered placing a standing figure near the mast rather than the two seated men seen in the final painting. His resolution is an impressive canvas with strong blue tonalities played off against the white sails and sand bar. Sunlight dramatises the entire composition and the gulls cast blue shadows. The action appears rather frozen in time but Hopper effectively captured the great strength of the sea and man’s momentary harmony with it.”

Gail Levin

In the Whitney Museum of Art in New York there is one study for the painting.

Study for The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet, 1944

Fabricated chalk on paper

Sheet: 15 1/16 × 22 1/8in. (38.3 × 56.2 cm)

Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

The painting itself belongs to the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. I saw it in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid during my August 2016 visit there. I have taken all the photographs that follow during this visit.

The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet, 1944

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain

The Port of Thessaloniki – Το Λιμάνι της Θεσσαλονίκης

Είνια μια ζωγραφιά που έφτιαξα με λαδομπογιά σε καμβά επί πλαισίου τον Ιούλιο του 1998. Αγαπημένη πόλη η Θεσσαλονίκη, μέγα εμπορικό και πολιτιστικό κέντρο των Βαλκανίων και της Βόρειας Ελλάδας ανά τους αιώνες. Η υγρασία τη περιοχής κάνει το φώς χαρακτηριστικό και ιδιαίτερο.

This is an oil painting on canvas I crafted back in July 1998. Thessaloniki is the major metropolitan centre of Northern Greece and over the centuries it played a major role as a commercial and cultural centre in the life of the Balkans. The humidity of the area contributes to making the light exceptional.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

This post is long overdue. Munch is one of my favorite artists. In this post I put together some of his paintings and prints and a photograph he took. I put them in chronological order.

Enjoy!

PS. Back in 2009 I wrote about Munch’s “Madonna“. In 2013 I wrote a piece on “Death and the Maiden“, a journey from Munch to Abramovich. Finally, in 2014 I wrote about Munch’s stories with “Alpha and Omega”.

Edvard Munch – Horse and Cart on a Country Road , after 1880. Oil on paper laid on board, 19 x 15 cm. (7.5 x 5.9 in.). Courtesy of Count Wedels Plass Auctions AS, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Old Aker Church, 1882. Oil on board, 16 x 21 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Street Corner on Karl Johan, Grand Café, 1883. Oil on canvas, 36 x 28.8 cm. Munch Museet, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Afternoon at Olaf Rye’s Square, 1883. Oil on canvas, 47.5 x 25.5 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Edvard Munch, Inger in Black, 1884
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Rue Lafayette, 1891. Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Summer Evening in Åsgårdstrand, 1891. Oil on canvas, 15 1/2 x 26 1/8 in. (39.2 x 66.2 cm). @ Christie’s Images, New York

Edvard Munch – Cypress in Moonlight, 1892. Oil on canvas, 81 x 54 cm. Private Collection

Edvard Munch, Sketch for Scream, Presumably 1893
Drawing, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – The Girl by the Window, 1893. Oil on canvas, 96.5 × 65.4 cm. (38 × 25 3/4 in.). Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA

Edvard Munch, Death in the Sickroom, 1893, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – The Storm,1893. Oil on canvas. 36 1/8 x 51 1/2 in. (91.8 x 130.8 cm). MoMA, New York, USA

Edvard Munch – Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand, 1893-94. Oil on canvas, 25⅝ x 35 in. (65 x 89 cm). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York

Edvard Munch – Sketch for ‘Madonna’. Charcoal, 1893-1894 (plausible). Photo © Munchmuseet, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Madonna. Oil on canvas, 1894. Photo © Munchmuseet, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Death and the Maiden, 1894, Drypoint on paper,

23.20 x 16.70 cm (framed: 62.50 x 46.00 x 2.10 cm)

Private Collection on long term loan to the National Galleries of Scotland

Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Love and pain – 1895

Edvard Munch – The Kiss, 1895. Etching and drypoint with burnisher, on wove paper, 34 x 27.6 cm. @ Christie’s Images, New York

Edvard Munch – Woman in Three Stages, 1895

Edvard Munch – Madonna, 1895-1896, lithograph printed in black, with hand coloring on light gray-green cardboard, 25 x 18 in (64.8 x 47.2 cm), Ohara Museum of Art, Japan

Edvard Munch – Meeting on the Shore, Mermaid, 1896

Edvard Munch, Young Woman Washing herself, 1896
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch, Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897 (plate)
Print, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch, Mother and Daughter, 1897 – 1899
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – woodcut: “Two Women on the Shore”, 1898

Edvard Munch – Summer Night in Studenterlunden, 1899. Oil on canvas. The Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – The dance of life. Painted between 1899 and 1900. Oil on canvas, 129 x 191 cm. National Gallery of Norway, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Dancing on a Shore, 1900. Oil on canvas, 95.5 x 98.5 cm. National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic

Edvard Munch – View from Nordstrand, 1900-01

Edvard Munch – Road in Åsgårdstrand, 1901. Oil on canvas, 88.3 x 113.8 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland

Edvard Munch, The Fairy tale Forest, 1901 – 1902
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Foster Mothers in Court, 1902

Edvard Munch – Clothes On A Line In Asgardstrand, 1902

Edvard Munch – White Night. Aasgardstrand (Girls on the Bridge), 1902-03. Oil on canvas, 86 x 75.8 cm. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia

Edvard Munch, Blonde and dark haired nudes, 1902-3

Edvard Munch – Girl with Red Check Dress and Hat, 1902-3

Edvard Munch – Girl Under Apple Tree, 1904. Oil on canvas, 43 1/2 × 39 11/16 in. (110.49 × 100.81 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Edvard Munch – Merry Company, 1903. Oil on canvas, 59 x 83.5 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Ingse Vibe, 1903

Edvard Munch – Thuringian Forest, 1904. Oil on canvas, 29 3/4 × 39 1/2 in. (75.57 × 100.33 cm). Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), Dallas, TX, USA

Edvard Munch – Two Girls with Blue Aprons, 1904-05. Oil on canvas, 115.5 x 93 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Chestnut Trees, 1906. Oil on canvas, 101 x 80 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Friedrich Nietzsche. Oil and tempera on canvas, 1906. Photo © Munchmuseet

Edward Munch, Self portrait with bottle of wine, 1906, Munch Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch, The Death of Marat, 1906-1907 (plate)

Print, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch Self Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemünde 1907
Gelatin silver print
9 x 9.4 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/ DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum Oslo

The Sick Child 1907 Edvard Munch 1863-1944 Presented by Thomas Olsen 1939 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05035

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1907, Tate Gallery, London

Edvard Munch – Garden in Kragerø, 1909. Oil on canvas, 47½ x 43¾ in. (120.7 x 111.1 cm.). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York

Edvard Munch – Two old men, 1910

The Sun, 1910–11. Oil on canvas. Photo © Munchmuseet, Universty of Oslo.

Edvard Munch – Springtime (Lovers by the shore), 1911-13. Oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm. (27.6 x 35.4 in.). Private Collection

Edvard Munch, Seated Nude, 1913
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Winter Landscape, 1915. Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm. Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria

Edvard Munch, Midsummer, 1915
Painting

Edvard Munch – Self Portrait in Bergen, 1916. Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 60 cm. The Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Seated young woman, 1916. Oil on canvas, 136 x 110 cm. (53 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London

Edvard Munch – Man in the Cabbage Field, 1916. Oil on canvas, 136 x 180 cm. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – At the Grand Piano, 1916-17. Oil on canvas, 67 x 100 cm. Munch-Museet, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – The Haymaker, 1917

Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1918. Oil over crayon on canvas, 66.5 x 100.5 cm. (26 3/4 x 39 1/2 in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London

Edvard Munch – Landscape from Hvitsten – 1918

Edvard Munch, Bathing Man, 1918,
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – Woman with Poppies, 1918-19. Oil on canvas, 100 x 75 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Horse Team, 1919. Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 145.5 cm. National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Melancholy, 1919. Oil on canvas, 120 × 125 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Two teenagers, 1919

Edvard Munch – Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil, 1920. Oil on canvas, 150 x 129 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch, Workers Returning Home, 1920
Painting, National Museum, Oslo

Edvard Munch – The Wave, 1921. Oil on canvas. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Elm Forest in Spring, 1923. Oil on canvas, 109 x 130 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Spring Landscape, c. 1923-24. OIl on canvas, 39½ x 49⅜ in. (100.3 x 125.3 cm). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York

Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait in Hat and Coat, 1923-4

Edvard Munch – Seated Model on the Couch, 1924. Oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Consolation in the forest, 1924-25. Oil on canvas, 215 x 173 cm. Munch-Museet, Oslo, Norway

Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Palette, 1926. Oil on canvas, 90 x 68 cm. (35½ x 26 ¾in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London

Edvard Munch – Still Life with Cabbage and Other Vegetables 1926-1930

Edvard Munch Disturbed Vision 1930
Oil on canvas
80 x 64 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Musem Oslo

Edvard Munch, Birgitte III, 1930

Title: Kunstneren og hans syke øye X.

Edvard Munch The Artist with a skull: Optical Illusion from the Eye Disease 1930
© Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsend Group/DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum Oslo

Edvard Munch The Artist’s Injured Eye (and a figure of a bird’s head) 1930–1
Crayon on paper
50.2 x 31.5 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/ DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum, Oslo 

Edvard Munch [Norwegian, 1863-1944], Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-43

Edvard Munch’s grave in Oslo’s Vår Frelsers Gravlund (Our Savior’s Cemetery)

Depictions of two or more women

I started this post after I had the idea that there is a different pulse in an image that depicts only women, two or more.

I started searching and this is a sample of what I came up with.

THE “LADIES IN BLUE” FRESCO, Knossos Palace, Crete, Greece

1500-1450 BC

Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete

This is a fresco from the Minoan Palace of Knossos in Crete, on exhibit in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete, Greece. It was made 27 centuries ago and is part of a composition of richly dressed and lavishly bejewelled female figures depicted against a blue ground. Despite its fragmentary condition, the wall painting transmits the sense of opulence and prosperity of the royal court while reflecting the coquetry of the ladies, who gesture displaying the richness of their jewellery.

Theophany Dance, Golden Ring, Knossos Palace, Crete, 1600 BC

Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete

The breast naked female figures dance to celebrate the presence of a goddess (theophany).

Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)

Deux femmes nues, l’une assise et l’autre couchée

(Two naked women, one seated, the other reclining)

Louvre Museum, Paris, France

H. 0,114 m ; L. 0,25 m

One of the many sketches Ingres drew in the 1850s before settling on the “Turkish Bath” composition.

Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)

Feuille d’études de femmes pour le Bain turc

(Study for Turkish Bath), Louvre Museum, Paris, France

H. 0,062 m ; L. 0,049 m

Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)

Le Bain Turc (The Turkish Bath) 1860

Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Diameter 108 cm

Oil on canvas

What a composition! I do not think there is another painting with so much female flesh on it!

Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864

Watercolor

“The painting, “Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,” is likely one of the first depictions of same-sex female desire made for a gallery-going audience in the West, and the painter Simeon Solomon, was a gay Jewish artist living in Victorian England whose work has been nearly forgotten.
Solomon, who was associated with the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite movement, had his career cut short when he was arrested twice for same-sex liaisons with men (in 1873 and 1874), at the apogee of his fame, and it tragically changed the course of his life.” (Jacqui Palumbo, CNN)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir The Skiff (La Yole) 1875 Oil on canvas, 71 x 92 cm Bought, 1982 NG6478 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6478

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Yole (The Skiff), 1875

Oil on canvas
71 × 92 cm

We are probably looking at the river Seine near Chatou (some ten miles west of central Paris), although the exact site has not been identified. However, it is likely that Renoir was more interested in creating a generalised image of a summer’s day on the river than in producing an accurate topographical record. Although routinely dated to 1879–80, the picture was probably executed in 1875, the same year Renoir painted Luncheon at La Fournaise (Art Institute of Chicago), which has similar soft feathery brushstrokes.

Boating was a popular subject for the Impressionists, and Renoir includes familiar Impressionist motifs such as the rowing boat itself (in fact, a skiff or small gig), a sailboat, a riverside villa, and a railway bridge (perhaps also a discrete reference to Monet’s interest in railways). The arrival of a steam train from Paris in the background underlines the easy access to the countryside.

The All-Women Student Fire Brigade at Girton College, Cambridge, 1878

Girton Ladies’ College in Great Britain had an all-women’s fire brigade from 1878 until 1932.

Girton was originally founded as the College for Women in Benslow House, Hitchin in 1869. Lecturers from the town colleges volunteered to repeat their lectures to the Hitchin students in their spare time, and the women’s days were largely dictated by the railway timetables.

At Benslow House the Cambridge College system was emulated as much as possible, with a High Table for two and a separate table for the five students. Edythe Lloyd’s book A Memoir gives the account of a priest on a railway carriage approaching Hitchin declaring “Ha! This is Hitchin, and that, I believe is the house where the College for Women is: that infidel place!”

Prior to 1948, women at Cambridge were not given degrees, despite attending lectures and sitting the Tripos exams. Essays and exams were marked voluntarily by good-willed Fellows in the town Colleges. The Council of the Senate declined permission for women to sit exams and be awarded degrees but did not object to examiners looking over papers in their spare time. Personal applications had to be made by women in order to gain access to exams and have them marked.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, June – July 1907

Oil on canvas
8′ x 7′ 8″ (243.9 x 233.7 cm)

MOMA, New York

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting. It depicts five naked women composed of flat, splintered planes whose faces were inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks. The compressed space they inhabit appears to project forward in jagged shards, while a slice of melon in the still life at the bottom of the composition teeters on an upturned tabletop. Picasso unveiled the monumental painting in his Paris studio after months of revision. The Avignon of the work’s title is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels.

Fred Boissonas, Women in the village of Gastouri, Kerkyra, Greece 1903

Pablo Picasso, Bathers, 1918

Oil on canvas

Paris, Picasso Museum

Starting from 1918, Picasso spent all his summers at the beach, first at Biarritz, then on the Cote d’Azur or in Dinard. These journeys inspired him to create a series of works on the theme of bathers. This painting was created in 1918 at Biarritz and the first one of the series.

Max Beckmann, Fünf Frauen (Five Women), 1935

Oil on canvas

215.9 x 109.2 cm. (85 x 43 in.)

Courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company, London, UK

Evita y Libertad (1944)

Eva Perón and Libertad Lamarque appear together during the filming of the movie ‘La Cabalgata del Circo’. The film is best known for being the place where the myth of the alleged slap that Lamarque gave to the secondary actress Eva Duarte was born. This apparently led Lamarque to her subsequent exile in Mexico when Duarte became first lady of the Argentine Republic the following year.

Women working in the cotton fields near Aliartos, Greece,

18 june 1946.; Malindine, Edward

“Peasant women working in the cotton fields near Aliartos, there is not much cotton in Greece but enough to enable many locals to spin it, women to dye it, make garments blankets, clothes with it to meet the clothing shortage which is even worse than the food situation.”

© Daily Herald Archive / National Science & Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Dame Diana Rigg as Helena and Dame Helen Mirren as Hermia, 1968. Photograph by David Farrell, courtesy of the David Farrell Estate (c) DFP

The photograph from behind the scenes on Sir Peter Hall’s 1968 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was taken by David Farrell. He was lucky enough to see Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren when they were not yet Grandes Dames of the acting world. Filmed on location at Compton Verney, an 18th-century pile near Kineton, Warwickshire, the pictures form part of the venue’s Shakespeare in Art: Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy exhibition, marking 400 years of the bard’s death. Seeing the sultry Mirren, elegant Rigg and saucy Dench in their gossamer frocks could turn even the most reluctant of us onto Shakespeare.

Vanessa Redgrave as Mary Stuart and Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I during filming of ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’

by Keystone Press Agency Ltd
bromide press print, 13 May 1971
10 in. x 8 in. (253 mm x 203 mm) image size
Transferred from Evening Standard Library, 1983
Photographs Collection
National Portrait Gallery, NPG x182338

Margit Carstensen and Hanna Schygulla in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant‘.

Magnum photographer Ferdinando Scianna quietly followed model Marpessa Hennink in a small Sicilian town dressed in beautiful simple monochromatic clothes (Dolce & Gabbana Campaign, 1987). 

Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon hit the desert highway in Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott’s rollicking road flick. 1991

Women in a washing station in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal 1992.

Photo Credit: Nikos Moropoulos

Carmen Gaudin

Carmen Gaudin was the favourite model of the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). Toulouse-Lautrec met red-haired Carmen Gaudin in the Montmartre district of Paris in 1884, and she soon became his favourite model.

He created fifteen paintings and drawings featuring her.

More than the characters she seems so apt to embody, her person and her wealth of humanity without artifice have obviously fascinated Lautrec for whom contact with life is essential. His painting confirmed this for five years: between 1884 and 1889, Carmen obsessed him, to the point that the artist’s eye enveloped him with a kind of photographic gyration that did not yet have an equivalent among experts in the medium.

Like a filmmaker turning around his character to multiply the angles of shooting, Lautrec represents Carmen from the front, from the back, from the profile, head down, capturing the stubborn and fierce expression of the young woman whose flamboyant and untamed hair seduced him. This repeated and insistent appropriation of the image of a model, in that it is systematic, reflects the concern to identify the figures to better assert their singularity and their aesthetic strength.

Carmen Gaudin

Carmen Gaudin (1884)
Oil on canvas, 53 x 41 cm
Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The more orthodox and darker oil-painting style, with smoother surface, which can be seen in the portrayal of Lautrec’s models at this time, can be attributed to the influence of Bonnat, Lautrec’s teacher.

Carmen Gaudin 1885

Carmen Gaudin, 1885
23.8 x 14.9 cm
Oil on wood
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

(Albi) Carmen la rousse 1885 Toulouse-Lautrec – MTL.112

Carmen la rousse 1885

Musee Toulouse Lautrec

The Laundress

La blanchisseuse

Stamped with artist’s monogram ‘TL’ (lower left)
oil on canvas
36½ x 29½ in. (93 x 75 cm.)
Painted in 1886-1887

Private Collection. In November 2005 the painting set the auction record for the painter’s work, selling to an anonymous buyer for $22.4m (£13m) at Christie’s in New York.

While Joyant ascribed the date of 1888 to La blanchisseuse, and Dortu placed it in the year after that, Charles F. Stuckey and Naomi E. Maurer have convincingly made the case that Lautrec painted this picture in 1886-1887 (in exh. cat., op. cit., Chicago, 1979, pp. 113-114). The artist was probably not yet 23 years of age when he completed La blanchisseuse. It was his finest painting to date, and indeed, it is arguably his first masterwork. There is no prior picture in his oeuvre in which the young painter had so powerfully and dramatically characterized his subject, or expressed his deepening insight into the world around him with such clarity and certainty in his technical means. Projecting himself into the very soul of this young woman, who may have been no older than himself, Lautrec demonstrated a degree of worldly understanding and compassion well beyond his years. Yet there is nothing sentimental or emotionally extraneous in his depiction of her. Here he made a significant statement of what it was like to live and work in the lowermost rungs of Parisian society at that time; he has utterly transformed the particulars of daily life into the universal image of art. For an adequate comparison, using a similar subject, one has to turn to the mature work of an artist no less in stature than Degas.

Lautrec painted La blanchisseuse during the final years of his enrollment in the atelier of Fernand Cormon, which he entered in 1882. Cormon specialized in an unusual genre, of no interest in itself to Lautrec, in which he painted scenes from prehistory and antiquity that he painstakingly researched using the latest archeological findings. Nonetheless, having chosen to locate his studio in the less academic and déclassé milieu of Montmartre, Cormon proved to be a progressive teacher in other respects. At the conclusion of his morning classes, he urged his pupils to take their sketchbooks out into the streets and draw the people of all stations whom they encountered there. Having led a relatively sheltered life on the provincial estate of an aristocratic family, Lautrec was fascinated by the bustle of the streets and the people who eked out marginal livings in lowly occupations. Older, more experienced friends and fellow students, such as Albert Grenier and Henri Rachou, introduced Lautrec to the seamy pleasures of the demi-monde. In 1886, not long before he painted La blanchisseuse, Lautrec signaled his commitment to a bohemian life-style by renting rooms with a studio at 27 (now 21), rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre, where he stayed until 1898.

The model for this painting was Carmen Gaudin, who in fact made her living as a laundress. François Gauzi, writing much later, related a story in which Lautrec and Rachou spotted Carmen as she was leaving a restaurant sometime in mid-1885. Lautrec was irresistibly attracted to red-headed women, and is supposed to have walked right up to her and examined her closely. He exclaimed to Rachou, “what an air of spoiled meat she has” (in F. Gauzi, Lautrec et son temps, Paris, 1954, p. 129), apparently referring to the fact that like many laundrymaids, she probably worked as a part-time prostitute. Lautrec is supposed to have sought to improve her position by making her his model, but it appears that she had already posed for the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, and later worked for Cormon as well. In autumn 1885 Lautrec wrote to his mother that he was “painting a woman whose hair is absolute gold,” a clear reference to Carmen. His model turned out to be not quite the wild creature that he first supposed her to be. David Sweetman has described Carmen as “polite, punctual, discreet and eager to please. In fact this passivity was one of her sadder traits–[Lautrec] eventually discovered that she had a lover, or more likely a pimp that beat her up, though she never deserted him.” (in Toulouse-Lautrec and the Fin-de-Siècle, London, 1999, p. 142).

Lautrec made numerous studies of Carmen in 1885 (Dortu, nos. P. 243-247). She is easily identifiable by her russet hair, with a fringe that extends outward like small curving wings from her forehead, a petite upturned nose, and a squarish face (fig. 1). By the titles of these studies we know her as Carmen, La Rousse (the redhead), and in Dortu, no. P. 247, her occupation was identified as that of a blanchisseuse. The first large painting in which Lautrec featured her initially caused some confusion about her identity; it is titled A Montrouge–Rosa la Rouge, which refers to a gritty street song by the cabaret singer Aristide Bruant, in which the hapless working heroine, like Carmen in real life, gets bloodied in the end:

It’s Rosa I don’t know she comes from
She has red hair, a dog’s head
When she passes they say, here comes ‘Red’
At Montrouge.

When she gets a ‘John’ in the corner
Me, I’m right there not far at all
And the next day the cop finds ‘red’ all right,
At Montrouge.
(quoted in ibid., p. 143)

It was through Carmen’s situation that Lautrec first experienced the hellish underside of lower class life in Montmartre. In her presence the characters of Emile Zola’s 1877 novel L’Assommoir seemed to suddenly spring to life; the very subjects and fictional plots of the Naturalist novels that Lautrec had been reading materialized in all their disturbing reality before his eyes. In 1880 Joris-Karl Husymans published his Croquis parisiennes, in which he described the plight of washerwomen:

Oh yes, they have a bad reputation. Oh yes, the old ones prowl around like bitches scoffing and drinking, raging with thirst from the heat of the stoves. Oh yes, the young ones flirt, mad for love, and have a right old time on leaving the washhouse! And what of it? Do you think their lives are easy and that they haven’t the right to bury the dreariness of a long day in the bottom of a wine bottle or a bed? Oh, how they love and how they drink! Because to work standing up, under a rain constantly falling from washing hanging on lines, to feel the water creep over the hairs of your neck and run slowly down the middle of your back, to breathe steam from the laundry in big gulps, to have your loins burnt by the fire of the furnace, to carry cartloads of sheets over your shoulder, to stagger under the weight of an enormous basket, to walk, to run, never to rest such is their terrible job, their terrible life! (trans. Brendan King, Parisian Sketches, London, 2004, pp. 77-78)

The sadness of this dreary life may be seen in Carmen’s downcast and resigned expression in the painting Tête de femme rousse en caraco blanc, which, like the present painting, was probably done in 1886-1887, although Dortu ascribed it to 1889. Maurer has noted that these later paintings of Carmen are “subdued in color yet more subtle and refined than the somewhat crude, raw pictures of 1885. When Lautrec made his initial foray into the seamy world of the Parisian lower classes, he wanted his subjects to embody all its coarseness and brutality. In the years that followed, however, as his sensibilities changed, he considerably modified the quality of the works he produced after his first contact with the Zolaesque demi-monde. His paintings became increasingly elegant and subtle in mood as he sought to endow even the tawdriest subjects with decorative qualities and make them expressive of his own developing psychological insight” (in op. cit., pp. 113-114).

Lautrec captured and crystallized the very essence of Carmen Gaudin in the present painting. This was the largest of his depictions of her to date, and the most penetrating and personal in its projection of her inner life. Lautrec, with his own diminutive stature, viewed her slightly from below, which emphasizes the bottom-heavy, pyramidal mass of her lower body, which is further anchored by her left hand propped firmly on the table. Her figure then rises within the triangular shape of her white blouse and peaks at her neck and head, giving her an imposing, almost towering presence. Wearily, hunched forward by the weight of her chores, she leans forward into the light, sharply observing someone in the room, or perhaps looking expectantly to a window that opens to the world outside. In that moment she suddenly assumes an almost saint-like aura, and appears unbowed and defiant. While her eyes are hidden from view, we sense her indomitable character from her posture, her powerful hand, rubbed raw from her work, and the firmness of her jaw. Maurer has written,

By the size of the figure and the extreme boldness and simplicity of the geometric composition with its powerful light-dark contrasts, Lautrec has endowed La blanchisseuse with a physical monumentality that intensifies her mood of somber reflection and recalls similar works by Vermeer. Body inclined toward the open window and face gently illuminated by its light, the figure of the laundress expresses a quiet sense of yearning. By abruptly cropping the window with its open view and by curtaining the model’s eyes with her hair, Lautrec implies that her vision is directed not outside but inward. The masked eyes protect her from the prying gaze of the spectator as well, isolating her in introspection and suggesting how mysterious and hidden our real selves are from one another. (ibid., p. 114)

Carmen’s left-leaning pose in La blanchisseuse recalls Degas’ painting Répasseuse à contre-jour, one of a series depicting laundresses ironing that he made in 1873, whose realistic, proletarian subject caused a stir when Degas showed them in the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. Douglas W. Druick and Peter Zeghers have called this Degas Répasseuse “the most economical as well as the noblest of Degas’ early depictions of ironers, with a slightly tragic cast mitigated only by the wonderful effect of light” (in Degas, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, pp. 223-224). Lautrec was probably aware of this picture, and indeed in his own Blanchisseuse he created a ‘converse’ image of it. The window, table and model are similarly positioned. However, instead of silhouetting his subject against the light, Lautrec spotlights her against the surrounding darkness of the room. While Degas’ model is little more than a dark and anonymous profile, with little detail visible in her figure, Lautrec’s laundress has a strongly individual character. Unlike Degas, who showed the women at work, Lautrec went so far as to dispense with all signs of activity pertinent to Carmen’s occupation, as well as the tools of her trade. He instead proceeded by inference, allowing the title and the dramatic depiction of his subject tell the story in his picture. The novelty of Degas’ subject is less striking now than it was in the late 19th century, and his painting engages us primarily through “its wonderful effects of light.” Lautrec, on the other hand, draws in his viewers, now as then, through the unflinching intensity of his psychological insight, which is far more personal and confrontational than the “slightly tragic cast” of Degas’s painting.

Picasso also featured a laundress ironing in his own Répasseuse, painted near the end of his Blue period in 1904. Picasso was clearly referring to Degas’s paintings on this subject, and while he was a great admirer of Lautrec during his early years in Montmartre, it is perhaps unlikely that he knew Lautrec’s La blanchisseuse. In any case, Picasso’s painting is all about the misery and poverty of living, which he has stylized to such a degree that genuine tragedy has become melodrama. In contrast to both Degas and Picasso, artists who placed other agendas ahead of their engagement with the personality and inner life of their laundress subjects, Lautrec alone directs our attention in his portrait to the fact that this is the story of a real woman, a living, flesh-and-blood person.

Lautrec employed Carmen Gaudin as one of his favorite models into 1889. In the last paintings he made of her he adopted an airier, lighter keyed Impressionist manner, such as in La Rousse au caraco blanc, 1888 (Dortu, no. P.317), Femme rousse en mauve, 1889 (Dortu, no. P. 342) and, finally, Femme rousse assise dans le jardin de M. Forest, 1889 (Dortu, no. P. 343; fig. 6). Lautrec thereafter lost interest in Carmen, partly because of his contacts with other women, but as Lautrec told it, mainly because she stopped dyeing her hair, so that it no longer possessed its magical reddish-gold tone. Now an ordinary, natural brunette, she had, as Lautrec told a friend, “lost her appeal.” But she had initiated Lautrec into a hidden reality that the young painter had known little about, in David Sweetman’s words, “the grey world that lay behind the facade of starched shirts and layered dresses, the world of bourgeois fashion and comfort, whose slaves were the available playthings of the same men who paid so little for their daily luxuries” (op. cit., p. 143). This is the Paris that Lautrec came to know and love best, the nether regions of mixed light and shade, glamour and tawdriness, which would remain his hunting-ground, as well as his playground, for the rest of his life.

A note in Christie’s

“A Montrouge”– Rosa La Rouge, 1886-87

Oil on canvas
Overall: 28 3/8 x 19 1/8 in. (72.1 x 48.6 cm)

Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania, USA

Toulouse-Lautrec sought to show the underbelly of glamorous Parisian society. Here the model Carmen Gaudin poses as the prostitute Rosa La Rouge, a seedy and murderous character popularized by the songs of the cabaret performer Aristide Bruant. This painting once hung in Bruant’s nightclub, Le Mirliton, in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec paints Carmen with flaming red hair covering her face. Her jaw, which juts out, conveys her surly nature.

Red-Headed Woman in the Garden of M. Foret (1887)

Oil on cardboard
28-1/8 x 22-7/8 in. (71.4 x 58.1 cm)
The Norton Simon Foundation

This picture belongs to a small group Toulouse-Lautrec painted outdoors in the garden of a friend during the summer of 1887. Writing to his mother that July, he complained, “The sky is unsettled and is sprinkling us with an unconcern that shows how little feeling the Eternal Father has with regard to outdoor painting.” An irreverent wit, Toulouse-Lautrec is best remembered for his lurid, acidic portrayals of the Parisian demimonde. Here we see a very different side of his production—tender and pensive—capturing the features of his favourite model, Carmen Gaudin. Her flaming hair and pale, sharp features appear again and again in his pictures from the late 1880s.

Carmen Gaudin in the Artist’s Studio 1888

Carmen Gaudin in the Artist’s Studio (1888)

Oil on canvas
55.9 x 46.7 cm (22 x 18 3/8 in.)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gaudin wears the white blouse of a laundress and sits before a studio wall covered with angular canvases. Work-roughened fingers laced in her lap, she stares out at the viewer with a withdrawn, even sullen, expression. The life of a professional model was difficult and fraught with social stigma, her employment dependent on whether her look fit an artist’s vision. When Gaudin changed her locks from red to brown, Toulouse-Lautrec no longer hired her.

La Blanchisseuse, 1888

The Laundress, 1888.

Black and gray wash with white paint, scratched away in places, on gray cardboard prepared with white ground; sheet:

75.9 x 63.1 cm (29 7/8 x 24 13/16 in.).

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund 1952.113

A prolific illustrator, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made this drawing as an illustration for an article about “Summer in Paris” published in Paris illustré, a magazine popular among the middle classes. Although the article singled out the laundress as a charming object of the male gaze on the city streets, the stooping posture and dark-circled eyes of the figure seen here give her a worn, tired appearance that invites comparison with the workhorse behind her. The drawing’s sharp receding perspective emphasizes the act of street-level spectatorship and a man’s top hat visible in the coach behind the woman alludes to her subservient social and sexual role.

Toulouse-Lautrec made this drawing as an illustration for an article on “Summer in Paris” published in Paris illustré, a magazine popular among the middle classes. Although the article singled out the laundress as a charming object of the male gaze on the streets of the city, the stooping posture and dark-circled eyes of this figure give her a haggard look that invites comparison with the workhorse behind her. The sharp receding perspective emphasizes the act of street-level spectatorship. A man’s top hat visible in the coach behind the woman alludes to her subservient social and sexual role.

La Rousse in a White Blouse
1889
Oil on canvas. 60.5 x 50.3 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

“His painting should not be viewed merely as a chronicle of the anecdotal but as a quest for timeless values, for as Baudelaire had written, the painter of modern life should capture “the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.”

In La Rousse in a White Blouse in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, Lautrec depicts Carmen Gaudin, a girl of working-class origin whom he had discovered in the avenue Clichy in 1884 and with whom he had felt immediately fascinated. With her red hair and white skin, which enhanced her helpless and melancholic appearance, she was exactly the type of young woman he was keen to portray, and she therefore became the subject of several painting executed during those years. These include Carmen Gaudin, Carmen the Redhead, Carmen the Redhead with Lowered Head, The Washerwoman, and Carmen, in which the painter immortalised her likeness in a host of poses and costumes in his characteristic repetitive and insistent manner.

Lautrec, who generally shunned the plein air painting of the Impressionists, executed these works in the studio he shared with Henri Rachou on the rue Ganneron. In the painting in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection the studio background is sketched in order to make it go unnoticed and focus all attention on the sitter. Despite the simple pose in which the sitter is rendered, the melancholic atmosphere conveyed by the composition makes it a masterpiece. The technique of slight touches and very spontaneous brushwork is inherited from Impressionism.With this intentionally crude and unfinished execution the artist succeeds in imbuing with poetry an image that is otherwise very real thanks to his acute powers of observation that are evidenced particularly by the hair, which he paints with extreme care — both the wisps of hair that tumble over the girl’s eyes and those that have fallen out of the untidy chignon gathered at the nape of her neck.

As in other paintings featuring the same sitter, Lautrec achieves a new, modern approach to the art of portraiture that goes beyond a mere naturalistic depiction of the subject. By showing her in half profile with her head tilted and her hair hanging over her forehead partially concealing her face, he omits any reference to her identity and makes her an eternal and imperishable embodiment of the human being.”

Paloma Alarcó – Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Boulevard extérieur (à Montrouge – Rosa La Rouge)

Boulevard extérieur (à Montrouge – Rosa La Rouge), 1889, Paris, private collection

The depiction of the desolation of the street line while waiting for suitors is “résolument modern/decidedly modern”. The model is Carmen Gaudin, who chooses Toulouse-Lautrec for many roles. She is also especially appreciated for her flaming red hair.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Rousse (La toilette)
En 1889
Huile sur carton
H. 67,0 ; L. 54,0 cm.
Legs de Pierre Goujon, 1914
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Toulouse-Lautrec left countless images of women captured in their intimacy, including depicted in their toilet. Here, the female figure occupies the center of the composition and imposes itself in close-up, thus offering the representation of a sculptural back to the viewer. The rattan seats arranged around it suggest that the scene takes place in the painter’s studio, rue Caulaincourt.
If, at the time, the theme of the woman in her toilet was often treated in particular by Mary Cassatt or Bonnard, it is above all the naturalistic influence of Degas that is very present in Lautrec’s painting. Thus, the forgetfulness of the academic pose and the rather unusual accelerated perspective in Lautrec, are like an echo of the series of women at their toilet that Degas presented at the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886. The framing of the scene and the plunging point of view are indisputably reminiscent of the masterful pastels of Degas to which Lautrec devoted great admiration. In the same way as his elder, Lautrec shows women “without their coquetry” as seen “through the keyhole”. However, he differs from Degas by the humanity with which he looks at them and paints them. This
painting has been the subject of various misunderstandings. It has, in fact, since its origin known several titles and its dating has been modified. It is now established that it was made in 1889 and not in 1896, as it appears in the old catalogues. It is surely this work that Lautrec presented under the name of “Rousse” at the Exposition des XX in Brussels in 1890. This title, wanted by the artist, recalls his predilection for red models, which he represented all his life.

Martha and Mary in Painting

The biblical story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42) has been depicted in paintings many times over the centuries.

“38 Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτοὺς καὶ αὐτὸς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς κώμην τινά. γυνὴ δέ τις ὀνόματι Μάρθα ὑπεδέξατο αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν οἴκον αὐτῆς. 39 καὶ τῇδε ἦν ἀδελφὴ καλουμένη Μαρία, ἣ καὶ παρακαθίσασα παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἤκουε τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ. 40 ἡ δὲ Μάρθα περιεσπᾶτο περὶ πολλὴν διακονίαν· ἐπιστᾶσα δὲ εἶπε· Κύριε, οὐ μέλει σοι ὅτι ἡ ἀδελφή μου μόνην με κατέλιπε διακονεῖν; εἰπὲ οὖν αὐτῇ ἵνα μοι συναντιλάβηται. 41 ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ εἶπεν αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Μάρθα Μάρθα, μεριμνᾷς καὶ τυρβάζῃ περὶ πολλά· 42 ἑνὸς δέ ἐστι χρεία· Μαρία δὲ τὴν ἀγαθὴν μερίδα ἐξελέξατο, ἥτις οὐκ ἀφαιρεθήσεται ἀπ’ αὐτῆς. ………” (Λουκ. Κεφ. 10ο, 38-42)

38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary.[b] Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

(Luke 10: 38-42)

In this post I present some of the most interesting paintings of the story. In terms of their composition, I grouped the paintings as follows.

Christ, Mary and Martha (5)

El Greco (c. 1600)

Jan Bruegel the younger and Rubens (1628)

Attributed to Abraham van Dijck (1652)

Johannes Vermeer (1655)

Charles de La Fosse (1700s)

Mary and Martha (1)

Caravaggio (1598)

Picture within a picture (1)

Velazquez (1618)

Interior without kitchen scene (3)

Engebrechtsz (1515-1520)

Tintoretto (1570 – 1575)

Anonymous, French (18th century)

Kitchen scene in the foreground (4)

Artsen (last quarter of the 16th century)

Beuckelaer (1568)

Jacopo and Francesco Bassano (1576 – 1577)

Jan Steen (1650s)

Cornelis Engebrechtsz – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Circa 1515-1520
oil on panel
Height: 55 cm (21.6 in); Width: 44.5 cm (17.5 in)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Interior with Christ in the house of Mary and Martha. To the left Christ is sitting next to his mother Mary speaking to some of his disciples. On the floor in front of him Mary, Martha’s sister, is kneeling. In the background Martha is working by the fireplace. Above the archway to the kitchen a relief with the death of Lucretia is placed.

Cornelis Engebrechtsz – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Pieter Artsen – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Oil on panel

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Pieter Aertsen (1508 – 2 June 1575), called Lange Piet (“Tall Pete”) because of his height, was a Dutch painter in the style of Northern Mannerism. He is credited with the invention of the monumental genre scene, which combines still life and genre painting and often also includes a biblical scene in the background. He was active in his native city Amsterdam but also worked for a long period in Antwerp, then the centre of artistic life in the Netherlands.

His genre scenes were influential on later Flemish Baroque painting, Dutch still life painting and also in Italy. His peasant scenes preceded by a few years the much better-known paintings produced in Antwerp by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The painting depicts a kitchen scene combined with a religious subject is set within Renaissance architecture. The background depicts the story of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. This painting marks the transition from the late mediaeval practice of depicting religious subjects to a new era, in which art depicts the everyday life of the self confident bourgeoisie.

Pieter Artsen – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Joachim Beuckelaer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1568

Oil on canvas

The foreground shows an everyday scene of a kitchen filled with still-life elements and two women at work. In the background, beneath a portico, Jesus can be seen visiting the house of Martha and Mary, as is told in the book of Luke (Luke 10, 38-42). This Bible story is appropriate for emphasizing spirituality over material things. The abundance of objects in the foreground, recalling the opulence of the wealthy Flemish, is surpassed by the importance of the religious event depicted in the background. This approach breaks with the traditional thematic hierarchy and was characteristic among Flemish artists of that time. It had a considerable influence on Diego Velázquez´s early works. In this work, Beuckalaer combines the realist capacity to represent objects, which was characteristic of northern art, with the use of architectural elements, such as the portico, drawn from a knowledge of Italian art theory.

Joachim Beuckelaer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Jacopo Tintoretto – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

between 1570 and 1575
oil on canvas
Height: 200 cm (78.7 in); Width: 132 cm (51.9 in)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Jacopo Tintoretto – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Jacopo and Francesco Bassano – Christ in the House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus

1576 – 1577
Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy
Oil on canvas
81 x 116 cm (with 105 x 140 x 8 cm frame)

The description of the environment dominates everything: the large rustic kitchen opens onto an open hilly landscape – typical of the Veneto region– and is equipped with various kinds of utensils, copper pots, tin dishes, bowls and sieves; a kitchen where the opulence of food triumphs with a great variety of poultry and fish. In the foreground a cook is bending over a large crockpot in which she is making soup, and Lazarus is looking at its meal avidly. Of course the vices of greed and gluttony are contrasted with the virtues of the spirit and sacrifice but the scene as a whole is a pleasant description of a domestic environment at the end of the 16th century.

Probably due to the depiction of the pleasantness that surrounds the moral content, this picture was extraordinary successful compared to other Venetian paintings from the 1570s. A large number of replicas and variations are kept in Italian and European museums and abroad.

Jacopo and Francesco Bassano – Christ in the House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Martha and Mary Magdalene

c. 1598
Oil on canvas, 98 x 133 cm
Institute of Arts, Detroit

The painting shows the sisters Martha and Mary from the New Testament. Martha is in the act of converting Mary from her life of pleasure to the life of virtue in Christ. Martha, her face shadowed, leans forward, passionately arguing with Mary, who twirls an orange blossom between her fingers as she holds a mirror, symbolising the vanity she is about to give up. The power of the image lies in Mary’s face, caught at the moment when conversion begins.

Martha and Mary was painted while Caravaggio was living in the palazzo of his patron, Cardinal Del Monte. 

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Martha and Mary Magdalene

El Greco – Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

circa 1600
oil on panel
38 x 33 cm

Private collection

El Greco – Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

Diego Velázquez – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1618
Oil on canvas
63 cm × 103.5 cm (25 in × 40.7 in)
National Gallery, London

Velázquez has painted the interior of a kitchen with two half-length women to the left; the one on the left appeared in his Old Woman Cooking Eggs from the same period. On the table are a number of foods, perhaps the ingredients of an Aioli (a garlic mayonnaise made to accompany fish). These have been prepared by the maid. Extremely realistic, they were probably painted from the artist’s own household as they appear in other bodegones from the same time.

In the background is the biblical scene. Christ is shown as a bearded man in a blue tunic. He gesticulates at Martha, the woman standing behind Mary, rebuking her for her frustration.

Diego Velázquez – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Jan Bruegel the younger and Rubens – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1628

oil on oak wood
64 × 61.9 cm (25.1 × 24.3 in)

National Gallery of Ireland

Jan Bruegel the younger and Rubens – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Christ conversing with Martha and Mary – Attributed to Abraham van Dijck

Drawing on paper

c. 1652

Height: 184 millimetres
Width: 261 millimetres

The British Museum, London

Pen and brown ink with brown and grey-brown wash, heightened with white; some scraping-out;* framing lines…

Abraham van Dijck was a painter and draughtsman; probably from Dordrecht. He may have been a young pupil of Rembrandt in c.1650, to judge from his style, though this was possibly transmitted by another Rembrandt pupil, such as Samuel van Hoogstraten (q.v.). Dated paintings are known from 1651. He is recorded in Amsterdam in 1661, but died in Dordrecht in 1680.

The drawing presents a dark interior with Christ seated before a window with double arch, addressing Martha who stands at left with a basket in her hand, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, Mary sits with a book on her knees to right. 

Christ conversing with Martha and Mary – Attributed to Abraham van Dijck

Jan Steen – Christ in the House of Mary and Marth

1650s
oil on panel
Height: 73 cm (28.7 in); Width: 73 cm (28.7 in)
Collection Pollock House, Glasgow, Scotland

Steen, Jan; Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Johannes Vermeer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary 

1655
Oil on canvas
160 cm × 142 cm (63 in × 56 in)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

It is the largest painting by Vermeer and one of the very few with an overt religious motive. The story of Christ visiting the household of the two sisters Mary and Martha goes back to the New Testament. The work has also been called Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (reversing the last two names).

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is thought to be the earliest known painting by Vermeer. The strongest argument for its early date is the differences in painting techniques between this work and his later ones. In no other painting does he focus so exclusively on the figures in the central core of the composition. Vermeer in his mature works was very conscious of the relationship of his figures to their environment, a concern not evident in this work. Another element of Vermeer’s mature style is his interest in rendering the specific textures of objects. 

Johannes Vermeer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Charles de La Fosse – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary 

1700s

Oil on canvas

90 x 117 cm; 35 1/2 by 46 in.

Charles de La Fosse – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Anonymous, French – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
18th century
Engraving

Sheet: 12 1/16 × 7 1/2 in. (30.6 × 19.1 cm)

An engraving of an interior scene with Christ seated in a chair, addressing Mary and Martha, with three men standing behind him in the shadows. The print was published by Jean Mariette (French, 1660-1742), one of the most important print publishers active in Paris in the first half of the 18th century. An attribution to Claude Simpol (French, 1666-1716) has been tentatively proposed.

THE KRÖLLER-MÜLLER MUSEUM

In May 2003 I visited the best van Gogh Museum in the world, the Kröller-Müller Museum, located in the heart of De Hoge Veluwe National Park. The museum is easily accessible by car and by public transport. I took the train from Amsterdam, and then a local bus took me from the train station to the museum.

It is an experience that no art lover should miss.

It took me almost 20 years to post the pictures as I had them in storage and found them only recently. As you can see from the pictures, van Gogh’s art is captivating no matter what the subject, the materials used, or the circumstances under which the painter produced the work.

All the photographs published in this post were taken and edited by me.

Self-portrait (detail)

April -June 1887
Oil on cardboard

32,4 × 24 cm

KM 105.833

Four sunflowers gone to seed

August-October 1887
Oil on canvas

59,5 x 99,5 cm

KM 105.570

Windmills at Dordrecht (Weeskinderendijk)

Pencil, black and green chalk, wash, pen and brush in ink, and opaque watercolour on laid paper

25,7 x 59,8 cm

KM 126.249

Road with pollard willows

Black chalk and charcoal on laid paper

43,8 x 59,2 cm

KM 121.986

Pollard willows at sunset

Oil on canvas on cardboard

31,6 x 34,3 cm

KM 107.313

Head of a woman

Pen in black ink (faded to brown in places), and wash on wove paper

21,1 x 13,5 cm

KM 128.378

Portrait of Dr Gachet (‘L’Homme à la pipe’)

Etching on wove paper

32,4 x 25 cm

KM 116.945

Sorrowful old man

Pencil, black lithographic chalk, wash, and white opaque watercolour on watercolour paper

44,5 x 47,1 cm

KM 124.396

Portrait of Joseph-Michel Ginoux – detail

Oil on canvas

65,3 x 54,4 cm

KM 103.189

The sower (after Millet)

Oil on canvas

64 x 55 cm

KM 110.673

The Sower

17-28 June 1888
Oil on canvas

64,2 x 80,3 cm

KM 106.399

Portrait of a young woman

Oil on canvas

51,9 x 49,5 cm

KM 106.498

Interior of a restaurant

Oil on canvas

45,5 x 56 cm

KM 110.328

Basket of lemons and bottle

Oil on canvas

53,9 x 64,3 cm

KM 111.196

Still life with a plate of onions

Oil on canvas

49,5 x 64,4 cm

KM 111.075

Terrace of a café at night (Place du Forum)

Oil on canvas

80,7 x 65,3 cm

KM 108.565

Olive grove

July 1889
Oil on canvas

72,4 x 91,9 cm

KM 104.278

Orchard bordered by cypresses (detail)

April 1888
Oil on canvas

64,9 x 81,2 cm

KM 108.685

Pink peach trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) – detail

30 March 1888
Oil on canvas

73 × 60 cm

KM 108.317