![]() The well-defined geometry of the casement clearly separates interior and exterior, establishing the perimeters of our visual experience and lending permanence to the sun-infused landscape. In both works, the rectangle of the window echoes the frame of the canvas, functioning as a sign of the contemplative process of painting. The second, dated 1957, is housed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and was painted in the east-facing, ground-floor salon of the château rather than the west-facing, second-story studio (Monnier and Clair, no. Jeune fille à la fenêtre is the first of two large-scale canvases depicting Frédérique at the window that Balthus painted at Chassy. “Frédérique henceforth reigns over these premises,” Jean Leymarie wrote, “occupying the various rooms of the house with her various poses, as she reads, plays cards, daydreams, looks out of the window, or grooms herself.” ( op. She is easily recognized by her classic profile and long dark hair, whiling away the days in spacious, light-filled interiors. He depicted her in nearly forty oil paintings and innumerable drawings, more than he did any of his other sitters. For the next seven years, until Balthus left Chassy for Rome, Frédérique was his abiding model and muse. In 1954, Balthus was joined at Chassy by his step-niece Frédérique, whose mother Denise, a war widow, was married to the artist’s older brother Pierre, a novelist and painter. “His achievement at Chassy reflected a tranquility and equanimity that had nothing to do with the rugged living conditions reported by visitors” ( Balthus: A Biography, New York, 1999, p. “Whatever the struggles, the move facilitated a great period for Balthus’s work,” Nicholas Fox Weber has written. He purchased the property for a trifle, assumed the appropriately seigneurial title Count Klossowski de Rola, and set about restoring the château to something of its former glory. An imposing, turreted structure, long abandoned and hopelessly dilapidated, Chassy offered Balthus a long-sought refuge from the hubbub of Paris and the opportunity to cultivate his art at a remove from the modern world. He came upon the castle, isolated in rural landscape, while driving one day through the mountainous region of the Morvan. The setting for this poignant scene is the Château de Chassy, a fourteenth-century manor house in Burgundy where Balthus lived and worked from 1953 to 1961. Evoking the nineteenth-century Romantic motif of the woman at a window, with its connotation of unfulfilled desire, the present canvas is rendered in a softly ethereal manner and imbued with the characteristically Balthusian element of anticipation and mystery. “Balthus’s Jeune fille looks like she is waiting for something or someone,” Virginie Monnier has written, “and we wonder what is keeping her from going down to the farmyard” (exh. She cocks her head at a pensive three-quarter angle, dangling her arms over the windowsill in order to glimpse more of the garden below. The profusion of sunlit foliage visible through the window contrasts with the unadorned interior raking light illuminates Frédérique’s left shoulder and arm, as though tempting her to venture outside. In Jeune fille à la fenêtre, Balthus depicted Frédérique Tison leaning out the open window of his second-floor studio, her back turned to the viewer and her left knee resting on a chair to help her balance. ![]() 132 (illustrated in color in situ in Mrs. Hampton, Mark Hampton: An American Decorator, New York, 2009, p. Vircondelet, Les chats de Balthus, Paris, 2000, p. Clair, Balthus: Catalogue Raisonné of the Complete Works, Paris, 1999, p. Klossowski de Rola, Balthus, New York, 1996, p. Xing, Balthus, Shanghai, 1995 (illustrated in color, pl. Motoe, Balthus, Tokyo, 1994 (illustrated, pl. 138 (illustrated illustrated again in color, p. Leymarie, Balthus, Geneva, 1990 (illustrated, pl. Irvine, Remarkable Private New York Residences, New York, 1990, p. ![]() 345 (illustrated in color in situ in Mrs. Heilpern, “The Bass Reserve” in Vogue, December 1988, p. Foucart, “Artiste-Peintre figuratif" in Beaux-Arts, November 1983, no. cat., Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1983, pp. Klossowski de Rola, Balthus, London, 1983, p. 135 (illustrated illustrated again in color, p. Leymarie, Balthus, Geneva, 1978 (illustrated in color, pl. ![]() 26 (illustrated titled The Window and dated 1958). ![]()
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