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Lot Essay
On the eve of the Second World War, after a seven-year courtship and an intervening marriage to another man, Antoinette de Watteville agreed to wed Polish-French artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, best known by his sobriquet Balthus. The war years would test the pair; Balthus would be mobilized to Alsace, suffer psychological and physical injury and be discharged from service, before he and Antoinette would move from Paris to Champrovent and on to her native Switzerland in search of refuge. Painted during this intense period of upheaval, Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) is an arresting, dreamlike portrait of Antoinette in which place and time appear fractured and ambiguous. Despite being in her early thirties at the time of the work’s completion, she is depicted here as an adolescent. The voyeurism typical of many of Balthus’s depictions of young women seems to give way under Antoinette’s knowing, direct gaze—loaded with meaning and as if she offers an unspoken message to the viewer. Seemingly wrenching us out of time itself and into a quiet, uncertain and rarified present, Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) is a tour de force, showcasing Balthus’s ability to bewitch and transport his audience.
Paradoxically, it is only by turning our eyes to Balthus’s revered predecessors that we can come to fully understand the disjointed sense of time within Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier). Lamenting modern painting’s self-induced amnesia of its own origins, the artist reflected in his autobiography: “From [modernity] we can only return to the wisdom of Italian Fresco painters, their slow patience, love for their profession, and their certainty of achieving beauty” (Varnished Splendors: a Memoir, New York, 2001, pp. 78-79).
Prime among these masters to whom the artist calls us to return was Piero della Francesca. At age 18, the young Balthus traveled to Arezzo, spending the summer of 1926 producing oil studies of Piero’s frescoes. This pilgrimage would leave a lasting mark on Balthus’s developing style, particularly the clarity of Piero’s paintings, his preponderance for rituals, and his compositional structuring, which found parallels in Balthus’s own formal geometric order. Charles de Tolnay’s words on the fifteenth-century artist seem to correspond directly to works such as Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier): “Ritual solemnity is characteristic of all Piero’s compositions. His figures never seem to perform a transient action in this world, nor to take part in any real event; they appear immersed in a sacred cult with slow and solemn gestures, sometimes with serious, impassive expression, sometimes with serene piety… the simplification of the souls of Piero’s characters permits the artist, as well as the spectator to concentrate on the effects produced by form, color and line… It is as if one had soared into a world of archetypes” (“La Résurrection du Christ par Piero della Francesca” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1954; quoted in P. de Vecci, The Complete Paintings of Piero della Francesca, New York, 1967, p. 12).
And yet, Balthus is right to insist upon his distance from the Renaissance—if this painting is religious, it is only so adverbially, not adjectivally. The work’s near-square canvas almost takes on the quality of a medium format photograph, starkly composed and frozen. Balthus’s simplification via the intensification of shadow sharply cleaves the composition with modern panache, much like the knife thrust into the half loaf of bread at lower center and the bifurcated red and green tricot that Antoinette wears (a garment she specifically purchased to pose for Balthus). Despite the fact that any one of the objects set out in front of Antoinette could be at home in a Dutch still life, we need no appliances, lightbulbs, or products of industrial life to know that Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) is a product of the twentieth century. The delicate beauty of the subject, the evocative composition of the work and its voided, ambiguous setting come together to invoke the enduring ideals of the past and gesture towards a misty, indeterminate, modern future.
In their analysis of Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier), some scholars have noted the painting’s parallels to the occult world of Oswald Wirth’s Tarot. Antoinette seems to be fashioned as “The Magician,” confronting viewers with perhaps not a divine presence but a divining one. Sabine Rewald notes, “The objects laid out on the white tablecloth—a silver cup, half loaf of bread with a knife stuck in it, and a candlestick—relate to those often depicted on tarot cards. Arrayed on tables beside the magicians, these arrangements of objects were more likely to contain swords, however, than kitchen knives. The magicians often wielded batons as magic wands. The girl holds a candlestick” (op. cit., exh. cat., 2013, p. 108). Antoinette’s left arm proceeds towards us, as if she has knowingly and resolutely selected the unlit candlestick from the table’s array to push forwards, sharing with us a hazy insight plucked from our future. Her right hand recedes into the shadow of her cloak, the slight bend of her knuckles suggesting she is perhaps concealing something from us.
In a 1936 letter he sent to Antoinette, Balthus excitedly remarked that he had begun work on a painting he described as Le Chandelier. Scholars such as Yves Guignard believe that the present work is the very same mentioned in this letter, which Balthus would only complete in 1945. Despite the chaos of the war years, this would mean that Balthus and Antoinette brought Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) with them in their flight to Fribourg, Switzerland where the work would at last be finished. An early photograph reveals the painting’s former state and lends further credence to the theory that Balthus worked on this portrait of Antoinette over the course of several years. In comparing this initial state to the final result, Balthus’s perfectionistic commitment to the piece is apparent; he deepened the scene’s contrast, significantly reworked the candlestick and bread, and conspicuously thrust the kitchen knife into the fray. Once completed, the work was acquired by a Parisian collector and thereafter would remain in New York City collections for over sixty years. After passing through the hands of gallerists Frank Perls and Pierre Matisse, the work was acquired by Helen Acheson in 1963, who bequeathed the painting to The Museum of Modern Art, in whose collection it remained for two decades. The work was subsequently deaccessioned by the institution and acquired by Leonard and Louise Riggio in August of 1997.
Paradoxically, it is only by turning our eyes to Balthus’s revered predecessors that we can come to fully understand the disjointed sense of time within Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier). Lamenting modern painting’s self-induced amnesia of its own origins, the artist reflected in his autobiography: “From [modernity] we can only return to the wisdom of Italian Fresco painters, their slow patience, love for their profession, and their certainty of achieving beauty” (Varnished Splendors: a Memoir, New York, 2001, pp. 78-79).
Prime among these masters to whom the artist calls us to return was Piero della Francesca. At age 18, the young Balthus traveled to Arezzo, spending the summer of 1926 producing oil studies of Piero’s frescoes. This pilgrimage would leave a lasting mark on Balthus’s developing style, particularly the clarity of Piero’s paintings, his preponderance for rituals, and his compositional structuring, which found parallels in Balthus’s own formal geometric order. Charles de Tolnay’s words on the fifteenth-century artist seem to correspond directly to works such as Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier): “Ritual solemnity is characteristic of all Piero’s compositions. His figures never seem to perform a transient action in this world, nor to take part in any real event; they appear immersed in a sacred cult with slow and solemn gestures, sometimes with serious, impassive expression, sometimes with serene piety… the simplification of the souls of Piero’s characters permits the artist, as well as the spectator to concentrate on the effects produced by form, color and line… It is as if one had soared into a world of archetypes” (“La Résurrection du Christ par Piero della Francesca” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1954; quoted in P. de Vecci, The Complete Paintings of Piero della Francesca, New York, 1967, p. 12).
And yet, Balthus is right to insist upon his distance from the Renaissance—if this painting is religious, it is only so adverbially, not adjectivally. The work’s near-square canvas almost takes on the quality of a medium format photograph, starkly composed and frozen. Balthus’s simplification via the intensification of shadow sharply cleaves the composition with modern panache, much like the knife thrust into the half loaf of bread at lower center and the bifurcated red and green tricot that Antoinette wears (a garment she specifically purchased to pose for Balthus). Despite the fact that any one of the objects set out in front of Antoinette could be at home in a Dutch still life, we need no appliances, lightbulbs, or products of industrial life to know that Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) is a product of the twentieth century. The delicate beauty of the subject, the evocative composition of the work and its voided, ambiguous setting come together to invoke the enduring ideals of the past and gesture towards a misty, indeterminate, modern future.
In their analysis of Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier), some scholars have noted the painting’s parallels to the occult world of Oswald Wirth’s Tarot. Antoinette seems to be fashioned as “The Magician,” confronting viewers with perhaps not a divine presence but a divining one. Sabine Rewald notes, “The objects laid out on the white tablecloth—a silver cup, half loaf of bread with a knife stuck in it, and a candlestick—relate to those often depicted on tarot cards. Arrayed on tables beside the magicians, these arrangements of objects were more likely to contain swords, however, than kitchen knives. The magicians often wielded batons as magic wands. The girl holds a candlestick” (op. cit., exh. cat., 2013, p. 108). Antoinette’s left arm proceeds towards us, as if she has knowingly and resolutely selected the unlit candlestick from the table’s array to push forwards, sharing with us a hazy insight plucked from our future. Her right hand recedes into the shadow of her cloak, the slight bend of her knuckles suggesting she is perhaps concealing something from us.
In a 1936 letter he sent to Antoinette, Balthus excitedly remarked that he had begun work on a painting he described as Le Chandelier. Scholars such as Yves Guignard believe that the present work is the very same mentioned in this letter, which Balthus would only complete in 1945. Despite the chaos of the war years, this would mean that Balthus and Antoinette brought Jeune fille en vert et rouge (Le Chandelier) with them in their flight to Fribourg, Switzerland where the work would at last be finished. An early photograph reveals the painting’s former state and lends further credence to the theory that Balthus worked on this portrait of Antoinette over the course of several years. In comparing this initial state to the final result, Balthus’s perfectionistic commitment to the piece is apparent; he deepened the scene’s contrast, significantly reworked the candlestick and bread, and conspicuously thrust the kitchen knife into the fray. Once completed, the work was acquired by a Parisian collector and thereafter would remain in New York City collections for over sixty years. After passing through the hands of gallerists Frank Perls and Pierre Matisse, the work was acquired by Helen Acheson in 1963, who bequeathed the painting to The Museum of Modern Art, in whose collection it remained for two decades. The work was subsequently deaccessioned by the institution and acquired by Leonard and Louise Riggio in August of 1997.