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Lot Essay
‘Modernity may consist in not knowing how to produce sentences with paint. An inheritance of the Renaissance, this notion has determined the modern tragedy of art. the artist as individual made his appearance then. He tries to express his inner world, which is a fairly limited realm. I want to invest painting with its universal, anonymous meaning. The more it is anonymous, the more real it is’
- Balthus
Balthus’ Le lever presents the quintessential motifs that had dominated the artist’s oeuvre for the majority of his career: the languid, dreaming nude figure, and, in addition, the cat, an oft-used stand-in for the artist himself. As with so many of Balthus’ greatest works, this painting is infused by a strange air of mystery. A young woman is reclining, pictured in the process of getting out of bed, clearly still shrouded in sleep and unaware both of the provocation of her pose, and by extension of any other presence in the room. The embodiment of unblemished innocence and youth, in her hand, she is holding a mechanical, toy bird, whose presence has seemingly lured the cat – a frequently used symbol of female sexuality in art – from its cage at the foot of the bed. The tension between the bird – innocent and unaware of its effect on the cat that is hypnotised by its presence – serves perhaps as a metaphor for the innocence and unselfconscious sexuality of the female figure. Painted between 1975 and 1978, this large work dates from the time when the artist moved from Rome, where he had served as the director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici, to Rossinière, the small village in Switzerland where he would remain for the rest of his life. With its thick, richly textured surface, soft, muted light and enigmatic, dreamlike atmosphere, Le lever encapsulates the stylistic traits of Balthus’ late period.
The stylised and classical form of the figure in Le lever is a reflection of Balthus’ lifelong reverence for the Old Masters. Almost entirely self-taught, in his youth the artist had studied at the Louvre, making copies of the paintings of Renaissance masters, in particular Piero della Francesca. The figure’s luminous skin, graceful elongated forms and the static pose are reminiscent of the nudes of the Quattrocento. In later life, while the artist was living and working in Rome, he once more fell under the spell of the Renaissance. As a result of the years spent restoring the famous Villa Medici to the simple, austere grandeur of its former self, he became immersed in the materials of Renaissance Italy, using the materials of this epoch to imbue his own painting with the timeless quality of these past works. Using casein, a fast-drying form of paint, in the works of this period Balthus applied layer upon layer of pigment to create the soft, muted, almost fresco-like surfaces such as can be seen in the present work. The quality of the paint creates a gentle veil of light, unifying the composition and heightening the sense of introspective self-absorption and dreamlike reverie that infuses this scene. It is these qualities that lend Le lever a timelessness that transcends the time, place and setting.
At the time that he painted Le lever, the theme of the young nude female figure had come to dominate his art. Instead of painting from life however, as he had done for most of his life, he began to paint from photographs of models. Throughout his career he had consistently depicted female figures in often strange poses, languidly seated on chairs or reclining on beds in what appear to be somewhat awkward, angular positions. The motif of Le lever appears in a number of previous works, including a work of the same name from 1955 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), and the earlier Jeune fille au chat (1956, Philadelphia Museum of Art). As in the present work, the nude figures are pictured in a state of frozen movement, as if lost in a moment of contemplation as they rise from bed. By contrast to these two earlier paintings, however, in which the nude figure is imbued with a provocative and tense eroticism that lends the painting a feeling of disquiet, in the present work, the female figure is instead imbued with a timeless realism.
- Balthus
Balthus’ Le lever presents the quintessential motifs that had dominated the artist’s oeuvre for the majority of his career: the languid, dreaming nude figure, and, in addition, the cat, an oft-used stand-in for the artist himself. As with so many of Balthus’ greatest works, this painting is infused by a strange air of mystery. A young woman is reclining, pictured in the process of getting out of bed, clearly still shrouded in sleep and unaware both of the provocation of her pose, and by extension of any other presence in the room. The embodiment of unblemished innocence and youth, in her hand, she is holding a mechanical, toy bird, whose presence has seemingly lured the cat – a frequently used symbol of female sexuality in art – from its cage at the foot of the bed. The tension between the bird – innocent and unaware of its effect on the cat that is hypnotised by its presence – serves perhaps as a metaphor for the innocence and unselfconscious sexuality of the female figure. Painted between 1975 and 1978, this large work dates from the time when the artist moved from Rome, where he had served as the director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici, to Rossinière, the small village in Switzerland where he would remain for the rest of his life. With its thick, richly textured surface, soft, muted light and enigmatic, dreamlike atmosphere, Le lever encapsulates the stylistic traits of Balthus’ late period.
The stylised and classical form of the figure in Le lever is a reflection of Balthus’ lifelong reverence for the Old Masters. Almost entirely self-taught, in his youth the artist had studied at the Louvre, making copies of the paintings of Renaissance masters, in particular Piero della Francesca. The figure’s luminous skin, graceful elongated forms and the static pose are reminiscent of the nudes of the Quattrocento. In later life, while the artist was living and working in Rome, he once more fell under the spell of the Renaissance. As a result of the years spent restoring the famous Villa Medici to the simple, austere grandeur of its former self, he became immersed in the materials of Renaissance Italy, using the materials of this epoch to imbue his own painting with the timeless quality of these past works. Using casein, a fast-drying form of paint, in the works of this period Balthus applied layer upon layer of pigment to create the soft, muted, almost fresco-like surfaces such as can be seen in the present work. The quality of the paint creates a gentle veil of light, unifying the composition and heightening the sense of introspective self-absorption and dreamlike reverie that infuses this scene. It is these qualities that lend Le lever a timelessness that transcends the time, place and setting.
At the time that he painted Le lever, the theme of the young nude female figure had come to dominate his art. Instead of painting from life however, as he had done for most of his life, he began to paint from photographs of models. Throughout his career he had consistently depicted female figures in often strange poses, languidly seated on chairs or reclining on beds in what appear to be somewhat awkward, angular positions. The motif of Le lever appears in a number of previous works, including a work of the same name from 1955 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), and the earlier Jeune fille au chat (1956, Philadelphia Museum of Art). As in the present work, the nude figures are pictured in a state of frozen movement, as if lost in a moment of contemplation as they rise from bed. By contrast to these two earlier paintings, however, in which the nude figure is imbued with a provocative and tense eroticism that lends the painting a feeling of disquiet, in the present work, the female figure is instead imbued with a timeless realism.