Bergère nue couchée

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Lying naked shepherdess
Bergère nue couchée
Berthe Morisot , 1891
Oil on canvas
57.5 x 86.4 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum , Madrid

Bergère nue couchée (German: lying naked shepherdess ) is the title of a painting by the impressionist painter Berthe Morisot from 1891. It shows a naked young woman, referred to by the artist as a shepherdess , lying on the bank of a body of water with her left hand supports her face. It is owned by the Spanish art collector Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza and is now on loan at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

History and picture description

In contrast to her male colleagues of the time, Berthe Morisot only rarely painted naked people, and did so without any voyeurism or reduction of women to a mere object of sexuality and art. In line with Charles Baudelaire's view that nude women should only be depicted in art in a realistic way. One of the people she painted is the young woman depicted here from the village of Mézy-sur-Seine , where Morisot lived with her family in a summer house during the warm months of 1890 and 91 and had painted several children from the village. The house had an orchard and the terrace overlooked the Seine valley . This rural, idyllic setting was inspiring for the painter and made her try something new. Although she had to take care of the upbringing of her daughter Julie and the care of her sick husband Eugène Manet , a brother of the painter Édouard Manet , it was to be the best time in her artistic development. For the first time in her life, she had her own studio, which was set up in the house in Mézy. In addition to several drawings by children in the village, she also painted a young female body lying in the grass with a goat standing next to it. A young girl, Gabrièlle Dufous, agreed to make herself available as a model for several of the artist's works, but asked to hide her hair in this nude painting with a yellow headscarf shown in this picture. The outlines of the body and its forms are reinforced by a high-contrast drawing, which suggests that Morisot is referring to the depictions of naked women as painted by Auguste Renoir . Renoir visited Morisot in Mézy in 1890 and 91, but she found her own style during this time. In this picture, the portrayed young woman loses the specifics of a shepherdess or goatherd, just the human body, naked in the great outdoors, casually relaxed and resting her chin on her left hand, is the subject of this picture, which in turn refers to her teacher Corot indicates. Morisot painted the blades of grass in the foreground, flattened by the body, with long brushstrokes in shades of green, ocher, brown and almost white in a spot of sunlight at the lower edge of the picture. For flowers and small leaves that emphasize the contours of the woman's back and head, however, she uses short strokes and dabs in stronger color contrasts from dark green to yellow to blue. The girl's face is shown in profile and shows, in addition to a small nose, full cheeks and red lips, a strong contrast between the yellow silk headscarf and the black eyelashes of the closed eyes. A strand of hair protruding under the scarf on the right side of the neck shows that the girl is brown-haired. The lashes are the only spots in this picture where the painter uses a pure black, along with a few dabs of color on the other bank of the water, which outlines a plant.

Red chalk drawing as a study, 1891
the same motif as a nude study, 1891

There are several drawings that show Gabrièlle Dufous, some of them executed as red chalk studies . Two of them depict her lying in the same position. As a clad shepherdess with a goat grazing next to it and as a direct preliminary study for this picture as a lying nude.

Technology, provenance and exhibition

The painting has the landscape format with the dimensions 57.5 × 86.4 cm. It is executed using the painting technique oil on canvas . It bears the inventory number CTB.2000.9 (CTB = Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza) of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Provenance :

On November 27, 1997, the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot auctioned the painting from the estate of Thérèse Rouart, the widow of Julien Rouart, Berthe Morisot's last grandson. The Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection was awarded the contract

Exhibitions:

literature

  • Kathleen Adler and Tamar Garb: Berthe Morisot , Phaidon Press, Oxford 1987, ISBN 0-7148-2454-2
  • Stuckey, Scott, Lindsay: Berthe Morisot, Rétrospective au Mount Holyoke College Art Museum et National Gallery of art Washington, New York et Paris. Hudson Hill Press, New York; Editions Herscher, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-7335-0150-X , p. 155.
  • Charles F. Stuckey, William P. Scott, Suzanne G. Lindsay: Berthe Morisot, impressionist. (Catalog, translated by Renate Renner) Klett-Cotta, cop. Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-608-76257-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kathleen Adler and Tamar Garb: Berthe Morisot , Phaidon Press, Oxford 1987, pp. 97 ff.
  2. ↑ Anne Higonnet: Berthe Morisot , University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1995, p 202 f.
  3. ↑ Ronald Pickvance: Description of the picture on the website of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza , Madrid.
  4. ↑ Ira Moskowitz (ed.): Berthe Morisot (contribution by Regina Shoolman), Hamburg 1961, p. 52 ff.
  5. ↑ Musée Marmottan Monet , Paris
  6. ^ Importants dessins et tableaux impressionnistes: provenant de la succession de Madame Julien Rouart. Catalog of the Drouot-Montaigne auction house