Balthus

Paris, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Balthus, 1956
Paris, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou ,Balthus, 1983-84, no. 156, illustrated p. 365

Buste de jeune fille is a captivating portrait of a young girl, painted during a period of important stylistic developments in Balthus’ career. His move to the Château de Chassy in Morvan inspired him and coincided with a renewal of his palette. This is seen in the lightening of the tonalities, dryness of the paint surface, occasional mannered systematic brushwork and conspicuous lack of depth.  ‘During his Chassy period, when his work was pretty much disregarded by the art critics and his only support came from a few discerning collectors like Henriette Gomés, he worked with unflagging energy, as intent as ever on a slowly achieved, highly wrought perfection. In these half a dozen years he produced some sixty paintings…they represent every type of picture (portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, figure compositions) and together form one of the most complete and truthful records that an artist has ever given of his surroundings’ (J. Leymarie, Balthus, Geneva, 1982, p. 65).

The Parisian dealer and collector Henriette Gomès held Balthus’ second exhibition in Paris. In the 1950s she set up a syndicate to support the artist financially and he in return repaid the members with pictures. This support was still in place when he moved to Chassy and in 1956 Gomès curated  another exhibition in which the present work was exhibited (fig. I).

Although, Buste de Jeune Fille, appears at first glance to be less suggestive than many of the artist’s other nudes, the theatrical ambiguity is there, and a quiet, more understated sense of eroticism. The mottled reds and blues of the background emphasise the play of curves and shadows of the girl’s naked upper body. The young girl is portrayed in profile with snake like wisps of embellishment on her hair. The figure, posed and studied, is frozen in time, suggesting a religious permanence. The dominant reds and blues look carefully plotted and worked and reworked, bespeaking an old tradition stemming from Italian Renaissance art.

243d06005- The present work at the 1956 exhibition in Gazette des Beaux-Arts