Image restricted by copyrightWe cannot display it on Smartify.
Object Image
Balthus’s model, Thérèse Blanchard, appears—as the title of this work suggests—unaware of her surroundings and lost in thought. Blanchard was about twelve or thirteen when the artist painted this canvas. She would figure in at least nine other compositions, either alone or with her cat or her brother. Balthus, like countless modern artists, believed the subject of the child to be a source of raw spirit, not yet molded by societal expectations. Many early twentieth‑century avant‑garde artists, from Paul Gauguin to Edvard Munch to Pablo Picasso, also viewed adolescent sexuality as a potent site of psychological vulnerability as well as lack of inhibition, and they projected these subjective inter...
1938
Oil on canvas
149.9 x 129.5cm
1999.363.2
Image © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Text © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Where you'll find this

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Permanent collection