The Artist's Daughter Eleonora Reclining on a Chaise-Longue 1879

Curator: The work before us, completed in 1879, is entitled "The Artist's Daughter Eleonora Reclining on a Chaise-Longue," executed in graphite by Domenico Morelli. Editor: Immediately, I’m struck by how loose the rendering is, a sense of comfortable domesticity caught with a quickness that belies its permanence on the page. Curator: The medium used – pencil and graphite – reinforces the idea of immediacy, of capturing a fleeting moment. Morelli uses the reclining pose to suggest leisure, a popular theme among the bourgeois during that period. Editor: The hatching and cross-hatching definitely create areas of significant visual density. Notice how that clustering occurs precisely where shadow would naturally fall on the drapery of her gown and along the contour lines defining her face. It's economical and very effective. Curator: Right, the composition is clever, guiding the eye primarily to the form of the reclining girl. Morelli suggests an attitude, that pose conveying perhaps weariness, nonchalance, even boredom—elements of the interior lives of women at the time. I am also very interested in how artists like Morelli show women within intimate familial spaces as representative of domestic bliss and also the burdens placed on women's leisure. Editor: Absolutely, and consider the chaise lounge itself— it bisects the composition and serves both literally as the platform for her leisure, while its implied diagonal leans into our reading of depth. Its materiality almost dematerializes due to Morelli's delicate use of graphite to imply light. Curator: We might think of the image as a modern-day odalisque—but instead of exoticizing or eroticizing, there’s an emphasis on naturalism within her familiar world. There’s also the gaze directed to the heavens, a posture of inward reverie or perhaps a passive hope in a paternal figure that both confines her and cares for her. Editor: Indeed, through these compositional decisions and choices in the build-up of form, we gain a richer understanding of how these images are able to perform many actions for a complex readership and in that way offer cultural touchstones in this Neapolitan painter’s ouevre. Curator: Exactly. Editor: A refreshing insight.