Femme nue, Luli

This sensuous nude portrait of a woman known only as Luli was the pièce de résistance in the celebrated yet far too short career of the Argentine painter Severo Rodríguez Etchart. Rodríguez Etchart received a traditional academic arts education in both Buenos Aires and later Paris where he studied at the Académie Julian with the French master William Bouguereau, whose refined, meticulously realistic style of painting clearly influenced such works as Femme nue; Luli. Rodríguez Etchart entered a nude into the Paris Salon in 1895 that apparently met with little acclaim, but when he exhibited Luli in the 1896 Salon, the Parisian art world took note and shortly thereafter his reputation took off, leading the National Gallery in London to purchase a later work of his. Further attesting to the significance of Femme nue; Luli, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires owns both a study and a smaller version of the painting.