Before The Fire 1912

Julius Leblanc Stewart painted this nude, Before the Fire, sometime in the late nineteenth century, with what looks like a pretty feathery brush. I can imagine him, shifting the canvas, stepping back, squinting. It looks like the kind of painting that came together through adding and subtracting, smearing and blending, to get the light just so. It's all about how the firelight warms the body. What's she thinking, all curled up like that? Maybe she's cold, waiting for the fire. The paint is thin and luminous, except where it’s built up to catch the light. Like that stroke along the back of her thigh. The curve echoes the chair leg, which echoes the vase on the mantle. What a cool, intimate scene. Painters are always looking at each other’s nudes, you know? This feels like a response to Manet or Degas. And then someone else comes along and looks at this, and something else happens.