Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Moulin Rouge but these verged on caricature 3 whereas the
present work has a seriousness and even monumentality in its
study of immediacy, observation and liberation of technique.
The Palais Garnier, as it became known in recognition of its
architect Charles Garnier, was completed for the Paris opera
in 1875. Lavish and opulent, it rapidly became the central
focus of Parisian society, the auditorium being designed in the
Italian manner as a horseshoe shape, to house an audience
who wished both to see and be seen. Boldini, whilst being
passionately interested in the performing arts and particularly
opera, was of course fervently aware of the nature and workings
of society in late 19 th century Europe.
The 1880s was an intensely active decade for Boldini, described
as ‘these crucial years of experimentation’ 4 . He had been living
in Paris since 1872; the demand for his portraits had accelerated
and his drawings show that he was studying the depiction of
natural movement. The year this panel was painted is also the
year that Boldini produced two portraits of Giuseppe Verdi, an
oil and a pastel, the composer having recently arrived in Paris
to work on the opera Otello 5 . Boldini, who had admired Verdi
deeply since he was a young man, worked tirelessly to obtain
the commission and there were frequent sittings. Tiziano
Panconi writes of the intensity of this period and the manner
in which Boldini’s increasingly rapid and urgent brushstrokes
are a response to the unsettled and melancholic character of
these years 6 . The energy of this work is surely also his response
to the artistic developments of the period: Impressionism had
broken through a decade earlier and as Manet demonstrated
first, surely inspiring Boldini in the process, along with Degas
and, later, Toulouse Lautrec, the world of ballet, opera, theatre
and music hall, ‘la vita notturna’ 7 became a nexus for their
creativity. The literature on Boldini often describes this period as
the point of greatest contact between Boldini’s work and that of
Degas (they admired each other’s work but shared a friendship
also); this conjunction being particularly visible in the studies
of orchestras and singers 8 . Most striking is the parallel use of
cropping and surprising viewpoints by both artists; seen here
in the low view of figures studied from the back and side. Just
as significant, however, is the variation of focus: in the present
work, the eye is drawn to the absolute, almost photographic
clarity of the central spectator’s arm, elbow and glove while
also absorbing the blurred and hectic representation of the
surrounding figures. Edgar Degas does something comparable
in his pastel Ballet from an Opera Box of circa 1884 which lets
us peer over the shoulder of a spectator seated in a box looking
directly over the stage 9 . A third challenge which occupied these
artists is the depiction of artificial light in nocturnal places:
the luminous effects cast by the stage lighting and the lamps,
candles and chandeliers of the auditoriums and cafés. Here,
the effect is subtle, this small section of the audience being
lit from above by the famous bronze and crystal chandelier
designed by Garnier, hence the strong light cast on the silvery
pallor of the spectators raised arm, the resonance of the rich,
ruby red of the upholstery and the glints in the background
striking off the gilded column bases.
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