Description
Painted in 1921, Marcelle Souty's brazen depiction of Zuloaga reclining in the artist's studio in Paris is one of her boldest portraits and possibly her best painting of nudes.
The work is a remarkable culmination of a series of large-scale oil paintings of the model that Zuloaga painted over a period of seven years. With only a gaily trimmed red 'fascinator' on top of her head, and a lace mantilla hanging languidly over her right shoulder and upper arm, Madame Souty poses decorously nude against a rich green curtain as she gazes to the right of the viewer.
His half-smile and unflinching gaze convey an enigmatic air of cold indifference. The studio props that wrap the model evoke a culture and heritage for Zuloaga that goes back centuries: an 18th-century tapestry acts as a backdrop; On the back of the tapestry, photographs of works by El Greco and Velázquez can be glimpsed.
Yet the directness of Souty's pose, its implied decadence reflected in the drooping green upholstery of the sofa, evokes a modernity entirely in keeping with the new world and social order that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.
The work is a remarkable culmination of a series of large-scale oil paintings of the model that Zuloaga painted over a period of seven years. With only a gaily trimmed red 'fascinator' on top of her head, and a lace mantilla hanging languidly over her right shoulder and upper arm, Madame Souty poses decorously nude against a rich green curtain as she gazes to the right of the viewer.
His half-smile and unflinching gaze convey an enigmatic air of cold indifference. The studio props that wrap the model evoke a culture and heritage for Zuloaga that goes back centuries: an 18th-century tapestry acts as a backdrop; On the back of the tapestry, photographs of works by El Greco and Velázquez can be glimpsed.
Yet the directness of Souty's pose, its implied decadence reflected in the drooping green upholstery of the sofa, evokes a modernity entirely in keeping with the new world and social order that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.