Model undressing - Julius EXNER

Title : Model undressing

Artist : Julius EXNER (Copenhagen, 1825 - Copenhagen, 1910)

Technique : Oil on canvas

Dimensions : 122 x 74 cm

Signed and dated lower right - 1842

Exhibition: most likely Charlottenborg Salon of 1845, under number 110, titled Modelfigur, awarded a silver medal

Provenance: Emilio Fernando Bolt (c.1860 - 1944), acquired from the artist around 1900, then by descent

Our painting was produced as part of the summer sessions organized between 1839 and 1850 by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783-1853), the master of Danish painting of the first half of the 19th century, in his private studio-apartment on the ground floor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. The master gathered a few students there between June and September, rented one or two models for the season, which were painted from different angles, the artists (including Eckersberg himself) sitting next to each other. Eckersberg used to paint a fairly small version, pupils larger formats.

The work fits more generally into the legendary context of the research and reforms carried out by Eckersberg concerning the studies of nudes and in particular of female nudes, to make this exercise a genre of painting in its own right.
Following his two-year stay in the studio of Jacques-Louis David in Paris, in 1811, Eckersberg had been made aware of working on the nude and in particular on live models, in natural light, while in Denmark the drawings were then only made from casts of antique models or other mannequins. In 1822, when he had been a professor there since 1818, it was he who had the Royal Academy of Copenhagen authorize the study of nudes, no longer in the evening by candlelight, but by natural light; from 1833, it was again he who allowed students to work on nude female models, even if official authorization from the Academy did not take place until 1839.
It was that same year that he instituted his summer sessions, privately, to direct his painting and that of his students towards a new conception of the representation of models: even if the nude remains the real theme, it does not However, this is more of a simple academic exercise. The subject is placed in a contemporary interior, with a rather sophisticated decor, and engaged in an intimate activity (it is this type of intimate vein that we will find later in Degas or Cassatt for example); so in our painting, the young woman is supposed to remove her clothes to wash herself. The objective is for the spectator to forget that the master and his students are painting a model during a posing session, and on the contrary to have the impression of being alone with the model, but invisible, almost like an unwilling voyeur. Moreover, in these paintings, the model never looks towards the viewer, inducing a psychological distance from him, while model and artist are in reality physically very close. On the other hand, these are not idealized nudes either, even if Eckersberg, proof of his debt to the antique, chooses fairly classic models and poses. Sensuality is real and very present, with dreamy, even innocent, and timeless expressions (the models do not seem to have a defined age), suave and slow attitudes and movements, and above all with clothes that hide or reveal skillfully parts of the female body: tops of the buttocks, pronounced hips...

Created by an artist under 20 years old, our sensual painting is probably one of the most beautiful and spectacular produced by Eckersberg students during these summer sessions. With a perfect balance between the firmness of an antique statue (it recalls the Venus de Milo) and the softness of the feminine forms, highlighted by a harmonious palette, it captures the attention with numerous details: the almost photographic folds white clothing and brown fabric placed on the armchair, the subtle shade of green of the wall hanging, the pink tint of the extremities (feet, hands, face) reflecting the probable embarrassment of the model despite her professionalism, the carefully styled hair and veneered according to the fashion of the time (particularly in Denmark), the very realistic rendering of the glossy fabric of the seat of the armchair, the tiny reflection of the window in the varnish of the mahogany leg of the table, the games of light and shadows on the different materials, and above all the dialogue between the sinuosity of the back of the armchair and that of the young woman's body. It is not surprising that he received a silver medal at the Charlottenborg Salon (the equivalent of our Salon des Beaux-Arts in Paris) of 1845.