femme fragile

Maurice Denis, Florentine evening, 1910

La Fiancée et son Ange Gardien, ca. 1880

Alfred de Curzon (French, 1820-1895)

Oil on canvas

Girls Dancing (1905). Maurice Denis (French, 1870-1943). Oil on canvas. National Museum of Western Art.

The hills of Fiesole near Florence rise behind young virgins dressed in the white robes of antiquity and crowned with flowers. Denis loved the land of central Italy with its natural beauty and artistic heritage stretching from antiquity to the Renaissance, and he lived in the region during several periods of his life. Denis was adept at the depiction of the world of western Europe’s original classical and humanist traditions spread out amidst a superbly familiar landscape.

Nocturne, 1889. 

Henri le Sidaner (French, 1862–1939)

Oil on canvas.

A portfolio of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

All Saints’ Day (1897) René Charles Edmond His

Auguste Renoir, Gabrielle reclining, 1896, private collection, source

Jeune Fille De Face, 1899, by Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola (1871-1950)

Ernest Édouard Martens — Last Page of the Novel. detail. 1903

Christina Nilsson as Ophelia (1873). Alexandre Cabanel (French, 1823-1889). Oil on canvas. Gripsholm Castle.

The Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson was legendary for her rendering of Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas’ opera Hamlet from 1868. The part was a difficult one. She met with success in Paris and then toured Europe and America. This portrait shows the star in the most famous scene from the opera, where Ophelia drowns herself after her passionate aria.

Ophelia, c. 1900, and Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910, by Odilon Redon (1840–1916)

Baigneuses au crépuscule (1912) - Maurice Denis

Ophelia, c. 1900, and Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910, by Odilon Redon (1840–1916)

“Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects” by James Tissot, 1869

“A Pensive Moment” by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, 1886

Nativité (1902) - Paul Gauguin