Portrait of Paul Valery (1871-1945) 1923

Jacques-Émile Blanche captured Paul Valéry with oil on canvas. The painting feels like a slow emergence, like the sitter and the space are coming into being through layers of thin washes and concentrated dark marks. I imagine Blanche circling around Valéry, looking, waiting for him to look back or away, trying to capture not just the man but his interiority. The colour palette is very moody, dominated by dark tones, with touches of red in the background and glimmers of gold on Valéry’s ring and watch chain. These small details feel symbolic, a visual shorthand for wealth, position, intellect. His face is very finely rendered and contrasted with very free and open brushstrokes in the background, creating an interesting tension between specificity and ambiguity. There's a kind of tentative seeking happening here, a question being posed about how to capture a person on canvas. It reminds me of Manet, but it also feels very modern. Artists are always in conversation with each other, you know? Taking something from the past and pushing it into the future. I think that process is really at play here.