Émilie Charmy
Émilie Charmy (French pronunciation: [emili ʃaʁmi]; April 2, 1878 – June 7, 1974) was an artist in France's early avant-garde.
She worked closely with Fauve artists like Henri Matisse, and was active in exhibiting her artworks in Paris, particularly with Berthe Weill.
[5][nb 1] When living at Lyon, she refused teaching jobs in the late 1890s[5] and went to study and work in the studio of Jacques Martin.
[9] French novelist Roland Dorgelès described Charmy as "a great free painter; beyond influences and without method, she creates her own separate kingdom where the flights of her sensibility rule alone.
[11] The most famous quote came from Roland Dorgelès: Émilie Charmy, it would appear, sees like a woman and paints like a man; from the one she takes grace and from the other strength, and this is what makes her such a strange and powerful painter who holds our attention.
[14] In the 1890s, Charmy began making Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings of subjects that ranged from prostitutes and brothels to scenes of middle-class family life.
[2] For instance, she made orient-influenced Girl with a Fan c. 1898–1900, a morphine addict in Woman in an Armchair c. 1897–1900, a group of nude prostitutes in La Salon, cultured women in Card Players and Interior in Saint-Etienne c. 1897–1900.
[15] Influenced by other artists at the time such as Matisse, she integrated Fauvism techniques into her paintings, as seen in Woman in a Japanese Dressing Gown (1907).
Charmy's depiction is a significant contrast, as her subject "despite her oriental dressing gown, is represented as the modern woman without the ornamental or coiffured hair.
[16] An unconventional aspect of her style was to leave parts of her canvas unpainted in this series of paintings, a technique used by her male Fauve counterparts.
[21] This exhibition is also where Arthur Jerome Eddy purchased L'Estaque, and he "praised the picture or its arbitrary, abstract colors and bold, decorative composition in his 1914 Cubists and Post Impressionism.
"[20] Fellow artist and her lover, George Bouche, had a home in scenic Marnat, which is believed to be the subject of her paintings The Path toward the House and Landscape, made between 1913 and 1915.
The works represented a shift to more intimate pictures made with vigorous brushstrokes and a palette of medium-light to dark tones.
Recognizing the difference between Charmy's work and that of the stereotypically refined feminine artist, writer Roland Dorgelès said the same year that she "sees like a woman and paints like a man".
[24] Yet, Charmy's work exhibits an interest in painting female models and prostitutes, including expression of women's sexuality.
[2][12][25] Despite Charmy's interest in using female models as subjects for her paintings, she avoided the mother-and-child theme that was becoming increasingly popular, especially with contemporary artists like Mary Cassatt.
Frequently their poses evoke academic and salon-style precedents, including many variations on the single figure standing or seated, prone or supine, or reclined laterally either toward or away from the viewer.
Colette, at that time at the height of her popularity, wrote the introductory text for the catalog of a major exhibition of twenty pictures by Charmy, held in 1922.
The same year, Charmy participated in another major exhibition at the Styles Gallery, on the theme of the "Female Nude", which included paintings by Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Manet, Renoir, Rouault and Matisse, and a catalog prefaced by Louis Vauxcelles.
[30] Charmy was first brought to the attention of France's Legion of Honour awards when she was introduced, through Eli-Joseph Bois (Petit Parisien Director), to several political figures, including Édouard Daladier, Aristide Briand, and Louise Weiss.
