Early 20th Century Naked Woman Painting Oil on Canvas

About the Item

Early 20th century Naked woman Oil on canvas, 170 x 75 cm With frame 192 x 97 cm years of the Merlin Law which in 1958 had sanctioned the closure of closed houses. In addition to works of art depicting this subject, attention has grown a lot on what were the furnishing objects, the traits of daily life and also on art and its representation inside the house. This multifaceted and elusive character has always been the obsession of novelists and poets, painters and artists in general. Most of the artists of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century set their gaze on the ambivalence of prostitution, which became one of the favorite themes of the then nascent means of communication, such as photography and, later, cinema. Especially in Paris, between the Second Empire and the Belle Époque, prostitution asserts itself as a subject in works that are linked to very different currents, such as academicism, naturalism, impressionism, Fauvism or even expressionism. The social prohibition of making public what happens inside closed houses means that photographers, as well as painters or sculptors, develop living pictures and fantasies in their studios that reconstruct the intimacy of brothels. The interest, in the world of painting, however, is decidedly prior to the nineteenth century. In this regard, we can mention the Flemish painting of the sixteenth century which already represented scenes related to this theme such as The brothel, by Joachim Beuckelaer, preserved at the Walters Art Museum in Antwerp. Works that can be cited in reference to what has been said about the exhibition at the Musèe d ' Orsay may be Jean-Louis Forain's Client, kept at the Collection of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis (TN) or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Au Salon de la Rue des Moulins, preserved at the homonymous museum in Albi in France. From the reconstructions and photos of the time it can instead be deduced that the presence of works of art similar to the one in question was also used as furniture. The composition is elegant, both in the forms and in the pose, it aims to seek sensuality and in the gaze, an ingenuity masked by a slight sweetness. The rendering of the painting is dense, pasty, strong and evident from a material point of view. The interior setting is defined by a very rich series of chromatic variations that lead to confuse the open curtain with the wall. On a chair we find the female figure portrayed, without veils, with the gaze turned to the observer. The overall vision does not prevent the painter from skillfully dwelling on details, such as the rendering of the hair, eyes or lips made up.

Dimensions:

Height: 75.6 in (192 cm)Width: 38.19 in (97 cm)Depth: 1.58 in (4 cm)

Materials and Techniques:

Canvas,Hand-Painted,Oiled,Painted

Place of Origin:

Italy

Period:

Early 20th Century

Date of Manufacture:

Early 20th Century

Condition:

Wear consistent with age and use.