Giovanni Boldini Italian, 1842-1931

This work reveals a very different side of Boldini's art from the grand society portraiture for which he is best known. A tableau intime,  painted on a scale befitting its intimate subject, it provides a fascinating insight into the working methods behind his finished portraits.

In sketches like this Boldini is seen at his freest, the fluid brushstrokes and stylised curvatures and elongations of the figura serpentinata epitomising his handling of the human form. Boldini's sinuous lines and lively forms lend his works an expressiveness but also a decorative idiom rooted in art nouveau. The grey tonalities also call to mind the work of Whistler, Boldini's contemporary in Paris.  

Avant-garde though he was, Boldini always remained indebted to the sixteenth-century Italian masters, whose work he had copied assiduously as a young student and later at the Academy in Florence. The serpentine forms and greyish palette that so characterise his work clearly hark back to Parmigianino and the Italian Mannerist tradition.