“Thread of Art” is the journey of a theme, an image, an element, a style or technique, or a particular medium of art that follows a path (thread) of thought, observation, analysis and understanding.
A thread, usually a thin line, travels and eventually highlights, captures, ties, forms, bonds and closes – or not.
In art, whether architecture, craft, drawing, painting or sculpture, or photography, this thread of seeing is present in traditional, abstract and non-objective art of all periods.
This blog will arrive once a month, between the 4th and 10th.

Take a few minutes. READ THE PAINTING.

What do you see?  

The painting is Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, or Luncheon on the Grass.  It was painted in 1863 by Edouard Manet (1832-1883). It is an oil painting, 7’x8’10”.

Perhaps you have seen it at the Musée du Louvre.

Manet was a well-known flaneur, part of the avant-guarde world and Paris’ Café’ Guerbois, a fashionable site for bourgeois locals and artists. Yet his artistic vision was stronger than the pressure to conform to the artistic standards of his day.

Although trained academically under Thomas Couture, Manet’s style was considered crude, with less blending and larger brushstrokes, flat planes of color, dark outlines, questionable scale and perspective, insensitive lighting similar to a camera flash, and an undermining of the Renaissance gospel and formulas.

Manet’s most dramatic career decision was his submission of this painting, Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, to the coveted Paris Salon of 1863. 

It was rejected, along with works of many other artists. Why?

 Acceptance in “The Salon” was a step to fame, financial security, recognition and regard. The Salon had high academic standards. Rejection was a blacklisting.

However, this particular year, so many popular artists were rejected that Louis Napoleon, responding to public outcry, set up the “Salon des Refuges”. Some of the rejected artists considered this salon inferior and mediocre, and refused to exhibit. Other artists,  including Manet, loved to shock the public – and they did. 7000 people visited the first day, mostly to ridicule.

Besides the looser, less formal style, WHY is this painting so radical and shocking?

Even for Paris, this subject matter was immoral, distasteful, and scandalous. Historically the female nude had been presented as a goddess, a Venus type, a nymph, an odalisque, or occasionally as Eve or a female figure that had transcended –

but never as a NAKED local woman, defiant, challenging, daring, and blatantly staring at us, the viewer, with no shame or modesty. She is not even submissive. She is sitting with two clothed men. Is she a prostitute?

Actually, we know WHO she is! And also the fashionably dressed gentlemen who may be behaving badly, or not.

Her name is Victorine Meurent. She was a model of Manet’s. The gentleman with the cane is Eugene, the brother of Manet. He is with the Dutch sculptor, Ferdinand Leenhof. 

(I will leave it to you to decide if the background nude is an apparition, a friend, or if she is even important in the scene.)

How is the figure in this painting different? The pose, the mood, the intimacy, the lighting. What resonates?

You are looking at an oil painting that is two hundred years older than Manet’s Luncheon. It is from the Baroque period in the Dutch Netherlands. The painting style is softer, sensual but not erotic, warmer in tonality, but also with loose brushstrokes. The painting seems deeply personal, quiet, and more intimate but with a subtle power. The female, Bathsheba, is receiving a pedicure in what is likely her bath or sleeping area.

How is her nudity different?

Is she aware of us, the viewer? Is she lost in thought? Are we spying on her in a private moment?

The story of Bathsheba is an old one, from II Samuel, Chapter 11: 2-27 through Chapter 12: 1-25. Summarizing, King David, from the roof of his palace, sees her bathing and is filled with lust. He asks her identity and is told that she is married to Uriah, a Hittite. He calls for her and seduces her. She later sends him word that she is pregnant. This child dies and David mourns. After ordering her husband, Uriah, to be killed in battle, David takes Bathsheba as a wife, and she bears a second son, who will become King Solomon, succeeding David as King of Israel.

Bathsheba is described as beautiful. Is she also powerful, conniving, and sinful, complicit in David’s plans? Does she carries the burden of her decisions, her failures and regrets, grief and guilt? Or is she innocent? Another victim of a powerful man.

Notice that she holds a letter. Could this be the note from David, calling for her, or is it the notification of the death of Uriah? The painting is haunting and disturbing. It remains mysterious.

Rembrandt paints with his soul. He paints as a witness to her thoughts, her vulnerability, her pain, her sorrow. He represents her as exposed, resigned, repenting. He is a master of a psychological light and psychological tones of silence that penetrates the inner person.

Rembrandt was a man of God. Many of his subjects are from the Hebrew Bible and are witness to God’s relationship with his human creations.

Bathsheba, like Rembrandt, is exposing her soul. She, like Rembrandt, has a personal relationship with Christ. She is not daring, defiant or confrontational, but private and absorbed in a thought-filled world of her own. Do we, the viewer, feel compassion or empathy for her?

Why was this painting accepted and loved? Is it because it is Biblical, and carries a message that is disturbingly real, reminding us of our own humanity?