Young Woman Washing 1920

Henri Gervex created this pastel drawing of a young woman, sometime between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. See how Gervex has scrubbed and blended the pastels to create an impression of hazy light. It feels intimate, as if we’ve just stumbled upon this scene. I imagine the artist, in his studio, working and reworking the composition, adding layers of color and texture to capture the soft glow of skin and the fleeting moment of a woman caught in her private ritual. What was he thinking when he made it? I can feel a sympathetic and observant eye at work here. Notice how he’s built up these layers of color, particularly in the background, where strokes of yellow and green suggest a sense of place. It’s amazing to me how painters are in this ongoing conversation. Gervex takes up a theme explored by so many artists before and after him, the female nude. Painting embraces ambiguity, and allows for multiple interpretations, there's never any fixed or definitive reading.