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Lot Essay
Born in 1885, Robert Delaunay was fundamentally self-taught and learned by emulating the styles of those around him, Delaunay was particularly inspired by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, and Georges Seurat, each of whom utilized color in distinctive ways. Color became the defining element of Delaunay’s practice—so much so that Guillaume Apollinaire credited him as the pioneer of a new style called Orphism in 1912. Apollinaire described Orphism as a visionary, avant-garde movement that originated in the geometric abstraction of Cubism but accorded primacy to color rather than form. However, by 1914, Delaunay would cast off the Orphic classification as too imprecise and poetic, instead describing his work as “pure painting,” emphasizing the conceptual character of his art. The year 1914 also marked the beginning of Delaunay’s representational period, yielding the artist’s only concentrated study of nudes which includes the present work.
In Femme nue lisant, Delaunay depicts a woman with her back to the viewer, sitting on a purple chair that appears to melt into the circular frame of the picture. Her foot is propped up on the stretcher of the table in front of her, which is covered with a richly patterned cloth. On the table sits a brightly colored circular container which abuts a book. Behind the book rests a mirror, which reflects the woman’s face back to the viewer. The work is marvelously realistic and abstract. While the central figure is recognizable as a woman reading—both from the title and the objects that surround her—the backside of her body is rendered with a lighter touch, in shades of pink and green that initially disguise her form.
There are seven known variations of this composition that Delaunay painted between 1914 and 1921, the years he lived on the Iberian Peninsula. Three are in museum collections: the Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao; Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. The treatment of the nude in the series is known to have been inspired by the similarly positioned woman in Peter Paul Rubens’ large-scale work Diana and Callisto (circa 1635). The painting was part of the Museo del Prado’s collection during the time Delaunay was living in Madrid, and the artist was known to have owned a reproduction. Femme nue lisant is distinct within Delaunay’s series of nudes. The work is notable for its circular framing and the absence of the undulating geometric forms in the woman’s body that appear in other versions.
In Femme nue lisant, Delaunay depicts a woman with her back to the viewer, sitting on a purple chair that appears to melt into the circular frame of the picture. Her foot is propped up on the stretcher of the table in front of her, which is covered with a richly patterned cloth. On the table sits a brightly colored circular container which abuts a book. Behind the book rests a mirror, which reflects the woman’s face back to the viewer. The work is marvelously realistic and abstract. While the central figure is recognizable as a woman reading—both from the title and the objects that surround her—the backside of her body is rendered with a lighter touch, in shades of pink and green that initially disguise her form.
There are seven known variations of this composition that Delaunay painted between 1914 and 1921, the years he lived on the Iberian Peninsula. Three are in museum collections: the Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao; Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. The treatment of the nude in the series is known to have been inspired by the similarly positioned woman in Peter Paul Rubens’ large-scale work Diana and Callisto (circa 1635). The painting was part of the Museo del Prado’s collection during the time Delaunay was living in Madrid, and the artist was known to have owned a reproduction. Femme nue lisant is distinct within Delaunay’s series of nudes. The work is notable for its circular framing and the absence of the undulating geometric forms in the woman’s body that appear in other versions.