NARRATOR:
Distorted features, strong dissonant color, swirling brush work and flat space are hallmarks of the work of Chaim Soutine. Rather than depicting this elderly woman objectively to show how she actually looked, Soutine painted her to express subjective, ambiguous emotions. Everything about this portrait is extreme. The brushwork is bold and fluid. The stark simplicity of the woman’s full-frontal pose contrasts with the wildly puffed-up shoulders of her dress and her billowing skirt.
It’s hard to tell what this sitter’s nature is, with her peculiar grin, agitated gestures and raised eyebrows. Her left and right eyes are so unlike each other that one side of her face seems to have a completely different expression than the other. Perhaps it’s some combination of emotions. Soutine’s personality was equally inscrutable. He moved to Paris in 1913 from his native Lithuania, and quickly fell in with the community of artists around Montparnasse, including Modigliani. Emotionally volatile, he suffered long bouts of deep depression and self-doubt, punctuated by brief bursts of creative energy.
After his death in 1943, Soutine was heralded as a precursor of a form of abstract expressionism that would flourish in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s. These later artists—such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning—greatly admired Soutine’s work. One described Soutine’s hand as “a dancer, following the rhythm of the disturbances of the soul.”
Woman Knitting
c. 1924-25
Chaim Soutine (French, 1893-1943)
Not on View
Despite the odds stacked against him as the tenth of eleven children from a poor Lithuanian family, Chaim Soutine developed a passion for art and moved to Paris to pursue his ambition. Under the tutelage of the sophisticated and well-read Amedeo Modigliani, Soutine began to practice his craft in earnest. With wildly expressionistic paint handling quite distinct from that of his mentor, Soutine’s portraits are infused with a vitality—even frenzy—that destabilizes the formality of their frontal poses. Indeed, many of his pictures have a caricature-like quality that at once derides and celebrates the particularities of the sitter. The wide eyes, avian nose, and elongated neck of the woman seen here, coupled with the inflated shoulders and cinched waist of her gown, communicate the physical idiosyncrasies of a particular, albeit unnamed, individual.
Details
- Artist Name: Chaim Soutine (French, 1893-1943)
- Title: Woman Knitting
- Date: c. 1924-25
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 32 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (82.55 x 59.69 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1968.07.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
G. Clausen, Copenhagen, in 1934 (?).
Madame de Cardonne.
William Rees Jeffreys (1871-1954), The Hall, Wivelsfield Green, Sussex, purchased 1939 for £90, (sale, London, Christie’s, 26 November 1954, lot 125, ill., as La Tricoteuse, to);
Renel or Revel (?buying for Spreiregen);
Jacques Spreiregen (sale, London, Sotheby’s, 17 July 1957, lot 91, as La tricoteuse, ill., bought-in); (sale, London, Christie’s, 9 July 1965, lot 97, color ill., as La Tricoteuse; bought-in); Jacques Spreiregen, sold 1968 through;
[Frank Perls, Los Angeles, to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Madame de Cardonne.
William Rees Jeffreys (1871-1954), The Hall, Wivelsfield Green, Sussex, purchased 1939 for £90, (sale, London, Christie’s, 26 November 1954, lot 125, ill., as La Tricoteuse, to);
Renel or Revel (?buying for Spreiregen);
Jacques Spreiregen (sale, London, Sotheby’s, 17 July 1957, lot 91, as La tricoteuse, ill., bought-in); (sale, London, Christie’s, 9 July 1965, lot 97, color ill., as La Tricoteuse; bought-in); Jacques Spreiregen, sold 1968 through;
[Frank Perls, Los Angeles, to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Fransk Malerkunst gennem de sidste 20 aar
- Palais Charlottenborg, 1934 to
Some Modern French Paintings
- Swansea, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, 1956-04 to 1956-05
Soutine
- Tate Gallery, 1963 to
Chaim Soutine
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968-02-20 to 1968-04-14
Soutine
- Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, 1968 to
Masterpieces of Five Centuries, Forty-Eight Paintings and Sculptures from the Norton Simon Foundation and the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum
- Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1972-10-04 to 1973-11-04
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Tuchman, Maurice, Art de France, pp. 215-216
- Werner, Alfred, Soutine, 1977, no. 26 pp. 116-117
- Kertess, Klaus, The Figurative Fifties: New York Figurative Expressionism, 1988, p. 21
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 182
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 420 p. 296
- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Chaïm Soutine : mod strømmen, 2023, 41 p. 57 (ill.)
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