The afternoon tea

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The afternoon tea
Marie Bracquemond , around 1880
81.5 × 61.5 cm
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris , Paris

The afternoon tea or the tea hour (French: Le Goûter ) is a painting by the French painter Marie Bracquemond from around 1880 . It shows the portrait of Sister Louise against a summer backdrop in the Paris suburb of Sèvres . The 81.5 × 61.5 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, belongs to the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris .

Image description

The portrait in portrait format shows the portrait of Louise Quivoron, the painter's sister, in the center of the picture. In a summer scene, the young woman is sitting in a frontal view on a terrace, behind which the lush green of the trees and on the left edge the view of a place in a hilly landscape is visible. A cup with a saucer, a jug and a plate with a few grapes stand on a round table, cut from the left and lower edges of the picture. Cup and jug lead to the title Le Goûter , which means an afternoon snack, with tea but also coffee being served. The grapes, as well as the lush green of the background, point to late summer when the picture was created.

The sitter's white dress, which is cut off from the right and lower edge of the picture in the area of ​​the hips, also fits the warm season. The dress has a small stand-up collar at the neck and long sleeves that extend to the wrist. Although the dress almost completely encloses the body, it appears airy and light due to its partially transparent material. Especially in the area of ​​the left sleeve, the sitter's skin can be clearly seen. Individual white dots seem to float on the surface of the dress on the upper arm and on the forearm you can see how a silk ribbon has been worked into the structure of the dress. The other details of the dress include - in addition to numerous other white dots on the surface - the clearly stiffened button placket at the front and a dark belt around the waist. Also made of dark material is a slip that partially shines through the white summer dress. The wardrobe is complemented by a cone-shaped white summer hat made of fine lace, on which a decorative arrangement of salmon-colored ribbons is attached.

The sitter's hands are leaning on the edge of the table and are holding an open book, the yellowish cover of which faces the observer but does not reveal a title. Louise Quivoron's gaze, however, does not go to the book, but fixes a point on the right outside the picture. Your eyes are only slightly opened. Her face is almost entirely in the area of ​​the shadow that the summer hat gives her. Only a part of the hair on her head can be seen above the free-standing ears, while the rest of the hair is probably pinned up and hidden by the hat. The eyebrows can be seen as thin lines above the eyes. Your complexion is shown in a pink shade on the cheeks, the bridge of the nose and on the chin, and there are also some almost white areas of skin around the mouth and on the sides. In contrast to this are the closed red lips that form the narrow mouth. All these details result in the picture of a cultivated young lady who has interrupted reading a book during a tea break and lets her thoughts wander for a moment.

Just behind the sitter is the shimmering green of the leaves of a tree. The bright dress of Louise Quivoron contrasts with the dark green of the leaves, which as wild splashes of color hardly show any details. Only on the left is a single branch clearly visible, which marks the transition to the landscape, which completes the background as a narrow strip. Different levels are staggered one behind the other in a striking variety. Right next to Louise Quivoron, the view goes down into a valley with a dense population of trees. Halfway up there is a large building with red brickwork. Behind it rises a dark mountain, on the slope of which there are other small houses. A piece of heaven can also be seen in the upper left corner.

Marie Bracquemond painted the picture with numerous small, tightly packed lines. She had taken over this technique from Henri Fantin-Latour , whom she greatly admired. With this technique, she was able to achieve special lighting effects in individual areas of the face, dress and landscape, with the light shadows being painted in various shades of blue, green and pink. The picture is neither dated nor signed.

background

Marie Bracquemond: - On the terrace in Sèvres, 1880
Félix Bracquemond: Terrace of the Villa Brancas , 1876

The painting The afternoon tea was created in the garden of Villa Brancas in Sèvres, the home of Marie Bracquemond and her family. The sister Louise portrayed in the picture was one of the artist's favorite models. In the picture painted in 1880 on the terrace in Sèvres ( Musée du Petit Palais , Geneva), she can be seen in a similar presentation in the same place, but in the company of another woman and a man. It is therefore quite possible that the painting The afternoon tea was created in the same year. As early as 1876, her husband Félix Bracquemond made a drawing of Marie Bracquemond portraying her sister on the terrace in Sèvres. Even if the scene from the painting The Tea in the Afternoon is not shown there, this drawing gives an indication that a date before 1880 is also possible as the year of origin for the oil painting.

The motif and painting style of the painting The afternoon tea clearly show the influence of the impressionist painters . Marie Bracquemond had participated in the group exhibitions of the Impressionists in 1879 and 1880 and was in contact with artists such as Edgar Degas , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet . In 1886 she also took part in the group's last show, but gave up painting entirely in 1890. The afternoon tea is one of the most famous works by Marie Bracquemond, who left behind only a small oeuvre . The picture is one of the few works by the artist in a public collection. Her son Pierre Bracquemond sold the painting to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris after his parents' death in 1919.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The German title The afternoon tea and the French title Le Goûter come from Marie-Christine Boucher: From Ingres to Cézanne: Musée du Petit Palais, Paris , p. 186. The German title Die Teestunde is in Ingrid Pfeiffer: Impressionistinnen , p 267 noted.