NARRATOR:
Alexei Jawlensky is often identified with the German Expressionist movement, but he never committed himself to any specific style. In this painting from 1910, he renders a young girl in patches of yellow, orange and blue. Prominent outlines further flatten the picture. The scene is imbued with a near mystical intensity.
Jawlensky was an officer of the Russian Imperial Guard when he decided to become a painter. He studied in Moscow, then went to Munich, where he met Vasily Kandinsky and the painters of the radical “Blue Rider” group. Jawlensky perfected a highly personal style, steeped in Russian-Orthodox influences—here, child and doll, look out in their jewel-like colors like the figures in a sacred icon. He noted:
JAWLENSKY [ACTOR]:
“Every artist works in a tradition. Some take their tradition from the art of the Greeks, others from that of the Renaissance. I am Russian-born. Russian icons, the art of Byzantium set up a holy vibration in my soul for they spoke to me in a language of deep spirituality. It was this art that gave me tradition.”
NARRATOR:
Child with Doll also reveals the influence of Henri Matisse, whose early expressive and wildly colorful work the artist had seen on his many trips to Paris. Jawlensky created at least six other pictures of children with dolls before settling on his primary theme, the portrait head, isolated and starkly abstracted.
Child with Doll
c. 1910
Alexei Jawlensky (Russian, 1864-1941)
Not on View
By 1910 Alexei Jawlensky was settled in the art scene in Munich, having moved there to escape the academicism fostered in Saint Petersburg where he trained. He was familiar with the work of the great colorist Henri Matisse through his trips to Paris, and several of his paintings executed around this time suggest that he was influenced by the Frenchman’s resplendent palette. In this painting Jawlensky has flattened broad, decorative shapes by enclosing them in thick outlines, and has used the bare cardboard background as an additional color element. The vibrant color, coupled with the sketch-like quality of the brushwork, speaks of a virtuosity in paint handling seen also among his contemporary German colleagues. A motif that intrigued the artist, a child holding a doll features in several works from this era, among them an image of his only son, Andreas.
Details
- Artist Name: Alexei Jawlensky (Russian, 1864-1941)
- Title: Child with Doll
- Date: c. 1910
- Medium: Oil on paper mounted on cardboard
- Dimensions: 27-1/4 x 20-1/8 in. (69.2 x 51.1 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection
- Accession Number: P.1953.086a,b
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Museum
Object Information
The artist;
Galka Scheyer, by the 1930s;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
Galka Scheyer, by the 1930s;
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, 1953-1954;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena,1954-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, 1975.
Bauhaus Painters; Spirit of Modernism: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Oskar Schlemmer, Alexander Archipenko, Alexei Jawlensky and Others
- Seoul, Ho-Am Art Museum, 1996-02-08 to 1996-04-28
- Jawlensky, p. 2
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum,no. 111 pp. 88-90
- The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena,no. 105 pp. 45, 59
- Jawlensky, Maria; Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky, and Angelica Jawlensky, Alexej von Jawlensky: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, 1890-1914,no. 321
- Haas, Robert B., Du, p. 33
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