Eugen von Blaas

Sale: Christie's, New York, October 18, 2000, lot 68, illustrated
Richard Green Fine Paintings, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner 

A shy young man hesitates in a shadowed doorway, guitar in hand.  The room he enters is a bright and cheerful one, full of light and color.  The three beautiful models at the center of the composition are engaged in two quintessential pursuits of the women who populated Eugen von Blaas’s turn of the century Venice: mending and gossiping.  The young man is separated from the action of the scene by the sharp vertical line of the door, and by the somber palette of his clothing and the hallway behind him.  The women by contrast are resplendent in bright clothing, the scene’s gaiety further heightened by their engaged expressions and the speckled floor, blue couch, and the basket of mending at lower right, also bursting with color.  

Eugen von Blaas' fascination with the interior world of women persists throughout his oeuvre.  Not to be viewed merely as decorative props, the artist is interested in showing working women engaged in their own activities, with men appearing mostly on the fringes, as mere visitors to their beguiling world. 

Whether selling fruit (see lots 126 and 128) looking after family members (see lot 136) or doing other chores against a backdrop of Venetian cobblestone streets and rooms, von Blaas’ women wear their hard work well.  As critic Clarence Cook observed in 1882, “Sympathy with poverty is not what von Blaas has to offer us, but rather, a good-natured fellow feeling for the foibles of the crowd.”  The guitar player’s desire to join these lovely menders is certainly understandable.  His feeling of separation might mirror the viewer’s; this inviting scene, full of detail and charm, is almost certainly a world away from the highly ornamental Salons of the artist’s many patrons.