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La Loge

(c. 1886 France)

Colnaghi

Madame Chantal Beauvalot dates this pastel to the late 1880s. She points out that our picture is characterised by the rendering of artificial light, a feature that particularly interested Besnard from 1886 onwards. Also the drawing recalls a number of paintings on this theme where the artist uses red as the predominant colour. From the 1880s onwards Besnard had become a well-respected portraitist for the younger generation of the wealthy elite (see Madame Henry Lerolle with her daughter Yvonne, c. 1879-80), The Cleveland Museum of Art). He painted in the manner of many leading Salon portraitists yet at the same time reflected an interest in a lighter palette and tones which aligned him with the work of the impressionists such as Renoir, Degas and Cassatt. This lighter and sketchier style is seen in our pastel, particularly in the background.

During the Third Republic, a time of cultural and political renewal, the Parisian leisure industry grew steadily and the theatre became extremely popular. The theme of La Loge epitomises leisure and luxury depicted within a public space in which women were acceptably portrayed. The theatre, and more importantly the theatre box, metaphorically concealed women within a very public space. In the Colnaghi picture the sitter looks down with the side of her face resting against the palm of her hand and the sleeve of her dress has fallen over her shoulder to reveal more of her shoulder than would have been deemed conventional creating a highly charged and seductive image. Juxtaposed against this is the edge of the theatre box which cuts across the picture plane confining the woman to inside the theatre box and preventing her from entering the public space of the rest of the theatre. The subject of La Loge (or at the Theatre) was also popular with other painters of the period, namely Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt, see, for example Renoir’s famous La Loge (circa 1874, Courtauld Galleries, London) and Cassatt’s At the Français, a Sketch or In the Loge, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

Paul-Albert Besnard was born in Paris to parents who were both artists; his mother was a distinguished miniaturist. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1866 at the age of seventeen, studying in the workshop of Alexandre Cabanel. He made his debut at the Salon of 1868. In 1874, he won the Prix de Rome with a painting of The Death of Timophanes. After his subsequent five year stay in Italy, he spent a further three years in London, where he received several portrait commissions. Finally settling in Paris, Besnard took up portraiture as a speciality and at the Salon of 1886 exhibited a Portrait of Mme Roger Jourdan, wherein he first explored the effects of natural and artificial light and shadow on the appearance of his sitter. He pursued this technique further with his now renowned La Femme qui se chauffe, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1889 and is now in the Musée d’Art Moderne. Besnard went on to a successful career and was appointed Member of the Academy des Beaux-Arts, the Acadamie Francaise, Grand-Croix de la Legion d'Honneaur, Director of the Villa Medici at Rome and the Director of the Ecole Beaux-Arts. Besnard was also active as a mural painter, in which his interests in lighting and vibrant colour can be seen. He executed several important decorative schemes. Amongst others the vestibule of the Ecole de Pharmacie, the Pavillion des Arts Decoratifs at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the ceiling in the salon des Sciences of the Hôtel de Ville and the cupola of the Petit Palais. Throughout his career, however, he continued his activity as a portraitist, as well as producing easel pictures which were characterized by their vibrant colour and luminosity.