Balthus

Jacques Lacan, Paris

Hôtel Drouot, Laurin, Guilloux, Buffetaud & Tailleur Paris, 24 November 1989, lot 28

Loudmer Paris, 24 May 1992, lot 63

Private Collection, Switzerland

Acquired by descent from the above to the present owner

Virginie Monnier & Jean Clair, Balthus, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre complet, Paris, 1999, no. P 142, p. 142-43, illustrated

Mieke Bal, Balthus: Works/Interviews, Barcelona, 2008, p. 134

Colette Morel, "Aux sources du paysage balthusien: la photographie", La revue de l'art, no. 201/2018-3, Paris, 2018, p. 66

“Balthus is sensitive to his surroundings, and the tone or mood of his painting depends on them. [...] The various lodgings on which he has left his mark reveal the nature of the man, his love of an ordered, even severe arrangement and styling, such as best retain the imprint of the past” - Jean Leymarie

Art historian Claude Roy described Balthus series of two paintings of the Gottéron as “one of the most somber paintings of his oeuvre, somber in all senses of the word”. Le Gottéron is an extraordinary landscape depicting the rocky gorge near Fribourg, where Balthus and his family took refuge during the second half of the war. Recalling the silvery views of Toledo by El Greco and the Bibémus quarry paintings of Cézanne, the present work shows Balthus’ tendency to flatten space, both through colour and design, with the composition divided into horizontal bands and geometric patterns in a manner typical of his landscapes of the 1930s and 1940s.

There are no overt wartime pictures in Balthus’ oeuvre, yet the dark palette and lack of open sky in the present work, hints at the prevailing mood of the foreboding. Commenting on this series vertical format, Mieke Bal writes: “Endless heights to climb, and when you reach the summit, there is more darkness to be found.” (Mieke Bal, Balthus, Works and Interview, 2008, p. 134). Barely visible in the lower part of Le Gottéron, the solitary figure provides a further sense of isolation as well as sense of scale.

The second work from this series depicting Le Gottéron, which was executed in 1943 and reworked after 1945, was sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2022 for $327,600 (incl. Buyer’s Premium).