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Home , Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Figure study, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Georges Braque, Marion Koogler McNay

French, 1834–1917 Woman Arranging her Hair ca. 1892, cast 1924 Bronze

McNay Art Museum, Mary and Sylvan Lang Collection, 1975.61

In this bronze , Edgar Degas presents a woman, her body leaned forward and face obscured as she styles her hair. The composition of the figure is similar to those found in his of women . The artist displays a greater interest in the curves of the body and actions of the than in capturing her personality or identity. More so than his posed representations of dancers, the nude served throughout Degas’ life as a subject for exploring new ideas and styles.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 1 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Fernand Léger French, 1881–1955 The Orange Vase 1946 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Gift of Mary and Sylvan Lang, 1972.43

Using bold colors and strong outlines, Fernand Léger includes in this an orange vase and an abstracted bowl of fruit. A leaf floats between the two, but all other elements, including the background, are abstracted beyond recognition. Léger created the later in his life when his interests shifted toward more figurative and simplified forms. He abandoned as well as , his iconic style that explored cylindrical forms and mechanization, though strong shapes and a similar color palette remained.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 2 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Spanish, 1881–1973 Reclining Woman 1932 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Jeanne and Irving Mathews Collection, 2011.181

The languid and curvaceous form of a nude woman painted in soft purples and greens dominates this canvas. Behind her, sharp green peaks rise towards a blue sky. This sensuous nude was part of a series of miniature works Pablo Picasso painted as studies for his erotic female figures of 1932. By the 1930s, Picasso had left behind Cubism and began to explore . A hybrid of both styles can be seen in this work.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 3 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec French, 1864–1901 Portrait of Madame Leclercq 1892 Gouache on board

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.83

Primarily known for his posters for the Moulin Rouge in and of cabaret dancers, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec also painted portraits of Parisian artists and writers. The subject here is the wife of Paul Leclercq, a poet and founding member of Parisian art and literature magazine, La Revue Blanche. Lautrec paints Madame Leclercq with the loose, sketchy brushstrokes that are common in his paintings and reminiscent of his drawings. Shown from the shoulders up, Leclercq’s top is unfinished, and the raw yellow artist/academic board, a cheap support popular at the time, is visible behind the artist’s abstract rendering of wallpaper. Though considered naturally beautiful by many, including Lautrec, Leclercq’s vanity annoyed the artist and created tension during the completion of the portrait commission.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 4 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM French, 1848–1903 Portrait of the Artist with the Idol ca. 1893 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.46

In this self-portrait, the French Post- Impressionist master Paul Gauguin gazes directly out at the viewer with his chin thoughtfully perched on his hand. A Polynesian idol resembling the Tahitian goddess of rebirth, Hina, similarly peers out from the far right corner. Gauguin’s striped shirt and polka-dot tie represent his bohemian identity. After leaving Paris and a career as a stockbroker in pursuit of painting, he traveled to Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands to escape what he called “everything that is artificial and conventional in European society.” The painting captures the artist’s efforts to present himself as an artistic genius and god-like creator—a self-proclaimed primitive “savage” living amongst the natives in an unspoiled paradise.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 5 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM French, 1840–1916 Profile and Flowers ca. 1893 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.117

The year Odilon Redon completed Profile and Flowers, he was no longer interested in portraiture and began calling his images with figures “meditations.” The dream-like aspect of this is one of Redon’s many trademarks: soft lines, background dotted with nameless flowers, a bouquet, and the suggestion of a halo in reference to Madonnas. Few details appear in the face of this woman who exists only in the artist’s imagination. Identifiable flowers mingle with fantastical ones whose colors add to the beauty of the composition.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 6 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM French, 1882–1963 Still Life with Pipe 1930 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Mary and Sylvan Lang Collection, 1975.23

With a grey and black pipe set on a table alongside an abstracted plate of grapes, Still Life with Pipe illustrates Georges Braque’s increasing interest in organic forms. He combined this pursuit with formal Cubist ideas of overlapping planes and multi-point perspective. The artist obsessively explored the genre of still life painting from the late through World War II, investigating the nature of perception through the world of everyday objects. Here, the artist collapsed a three- dimensional scene onto a two-dimensional surface, flattening the composition.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 7 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Auguste Rodin French, 1840–1917 Pierre de Wissant 1887, cast 1987 Bronze

Private collection

Auguste Rodin’s expressive, emotional, and vulnerable rendering of Pierre de Wissant depicts a body wringing in grief. Pierre’s left leg turns uncomfortably inward, his toes curling as if in pain, and he raises his hand to shield his face. Wissant was one of six leading citizens of Calais (a port town in northern ) who agreed to surrender their lives in exchange for King Edward III’s merciful treatment of the French city. Rodin captured genuine expressions of emotion in this work commissioned for a monument to honor the lives almost sacrificed in order to end a year-long standoff during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 8 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Aristide Maillol French, 1861–1944 The Nymph 1930 Bronze

McNay Art Museum, Gift of Emily Wells Brown in memory of H. Lutcher Brown and F. Lutcher Brown, 1975.17

The Nymph is a single figure study for the central figure of the group,The Three Nymphs, completed in 1937. The robust nude stands solidly on her right leg, with the left foot slightly behind and raised as if walking, an arrangement which gives a gentle movement to the stance. The full torso turns slightly on its axis, further suggesting motion. The large, swelling forms of the figure flow smoothly onto one another on clear, untroubled surfaces. Aristide Maillol, briefly a student of Jean- Léon Gérôme (whose work is on view in this exhibition) at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1887, became known for like The Nymph that express the living model from which they are formed, not a coldly abstract ideal.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 9 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM French, 1877–1953 Seated Woman–Rosalie 1929 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.39

Raoul Dufy’s Seated Woman–Rosalie depicts a young woman with pale pink skin and bright red lips, her body folded inward as she sits upon a loosely-rendered Turkish rug. Blue dominates the background, recalling the Fauvist style of artist (whose paintings are on view in this exhibition). Most well-known for his paintings of horse races and regattas, Dufy also painted numerous studies of nude women. His were curvaceous women with generous hips, offering wonderful opportunities for the study of flesh.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 10 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Dutch, 1853–1890 Women Crossing the Fields 1890 Oil on paper

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.49

Completed in the last year of his life, Women Crossing the Fields shows Vincent van Gogh’s continued interest in color and agriculture. The straight rows of the potato fields give way to his characteristic turbulent lines. Two women, one in white and the other in an orange-dotted blue dress, walk across the fields with a house and blue hills visible in the background. The idyllic scene echoes the artist’s words to his brother, Theo, in June, 1873: “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.” Marion Koogler McNay purchased this oil on paper from Chester Johnson Galleries in Chicago in 1934, making it the first van Gogh in a private collection west of the Mississippi.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 11 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM French, 1830–1903 Haymakers Resting 1891 Oil on canvas

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.115

Monumental figures set against a high horizon line distinguish Camille Pissarro’s outdoor scenes from other Impressionist paintings in this section. The Pointillist brush work here reveals the influence of the Neo-Impressionists. Pissarro’s women relax and reflect, illustrating the painter’s belief that peasant life held the basis for a harmonious, rational, and humane society. Political commentary exists below the surface of this utopian view. The artist was in fact an anarchist who believed in eliminating the intermediator between commercial and agricultural exchanges, providing the consumer with direct access to the agricultural production featured here.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 12 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Eugène Louis Boudin French, 1824–1898 Figures on a Beach ca. 1865 Watercolor and graphite on paper sheet

McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.17

Eugène Boudin was a master painter of sea and sky, often spending his summers painting outdoors in his native . With only lightly sketched lines and a few splashes of color, this delicate watercolor captures a day at the seashore, likely the beach at Trouville in northwest France. The watercolor is reminiscent of the artist’s paintings from the same period (on view nearby), with swaths of blue and brown to represent sky, sea, and sand as fancily dressed vacationing bourgeoisie leisurely stroll along the shore. Day trippers from Paris reached Trouville thanks to trains de plaisir, or tourist trains, running between Paris and Normandy that connected the capital with the English Channel coast in under six hours.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 13 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM American, 1874–1939 The Bathers ca. 1914 Oil on canvas

Collection of Marie and Hugh Halff

Two women preparing for a swim, one nude and one in the process of undressing, dominate Frederick Carl Frieseke’s painting. Famous for painting sun-dappled exteriors, Frieseke noted the freedom to paint nude figures in his garden or by a pond without being run out of town as a primary reason for leaving the United States for , 50 miles outside Paris, in 1914. The Impressionist style favored by Frieseke was shared by his neighbor (whose work is on view in this exhibition) though the two had little personal contact.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 14 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Claude Monet French, 1840–1926 Water Lilies ca. 1916–ca. 1919 Oil on canvas

Collection of The Tobin Theatre Arts Fund

Imagine a circular room whose walls...would be entirely filled by a horizon of water spotted with these plants, the walls of transparency sometimes green, sometimes almost mauve, the calm and silence of the still water reflecting the flowering display; the tones are vague, deliciously nuanced, as delicate as a dream.

In 1897, Claude Monet expressed these ideas about the project that dominated his last years. He worked out his epic concept on huge canvases that convey the effects of varying light conditions on the pond filled with water lilies in his garden at Giverny, 50 miles north of Paris. Painted as a gift to the French nation, several long water lily panels hang in a circular room at the Orangerie des Tuileries in Paris. This painting is one of many preliminary oil studies on canvas for those panels.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 15 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Loïs Mailou Jones American, 1905–1998 At Breakfast 1937 Oil on canvas

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the Arts

Loïs Mailou Jones painted this still life, reminiscent of a Parisian café, in 1937, the same year in which she made her first of many trips to Paris. Jones was one of several prominent African American artists drawn to France by both developments in modernist painting and Paris’ contrast to strong racial and gender discrimination in the United States. Rather than representing a detached still life, Jones depicts the scene from the perspective of someone seated at the table. A snapshot-like quality captures a breakfast of two hard-boiled eggs on blue and white china accompanied by an orange and a loaf of bread, all atop a rumpled white cloth.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 16 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM Find these French-inspired gifts and more in the Museum Store.

Encuentra estos regalos de inspiración francesa y más en la Tienda del Museo.

French Moderns McNay labels_separate format.indd 17 2/27/2017 11:18:51 AM