Puvis de Chavannes Family Collection
Marlborough Fine Art, London
Private collection, since 1952
London, Marlborough Fine Art, French Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries, March - April 1952, no. 21
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Glancing at the Century, 28 June - 20 September 1998, pp. 28-29, ill. p. 29
Son of a modest construction painter, Forain got passionate about drawing since his earliest childhood. At the age of 17 he left his home, started to lead a bohemian life, was taught the caricature and rubbed shoulders with Arthur Rimbaud. Gradually, his fame grew mainly thanks to his recognition as a talented caricaturist. Sharp and trenchant, his drawings denounce the hypocrisy of the bourgeois way of life, before taking an increasingly conservative political turn. He was converted to Catholicism and opted for subjects denouncing injustice and poverty.
The subject of the dancer is quite familiar to the artist, who was passionate about the world of dance from the very beginning of his career. Thanks to Degas, he had the opportunity from the end of the 1870’s to observe the dancers closely, to discover the backstage of the Paris Opera, a machine both prestigious as unhealthy. Very quickly, undoubtedly due to his keen eye for caricatures, he abandoned the gilding in order to take an interest in the salacious side of the decor behind the scenes. In his paintings, the dancer is most often portrayed as the prey of men, and not in full deployment of her art.
However, in this drawing, realized when Forain’s work took a particularly moralistic turn, it is quite the opposite that occurs: the dancer is presented alone, dressed in her traditional tulle tutu, with elegance, finesse and lyricism. The ambivalence of the artist’s message was not maintained this time in the depicted scene but in the atmosphere it conferred upon it: the predominant cold colours, the rough treatment of facial features, the use of pastel gives this charming dancer a sad, almost distraught look. Through his look before the injustice, both benevolent and implacable, his stroke describes the human condition in a sincere, honest and deeply compassionate manner.
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