Therese (1938) is a pensive and brooding portrait. Balthus has chosen to capture his subject as she lounges in an armchair, her barefooted leg crossed, skirt raised away from the viewer. Is it a confrontational pose? Yes, but she gazes past us, with an indifference so typical of adolescence. It was an attitude that Balthus instinctively understood. The muted tones of his palette — the ochres, browns, olives and crimsons underscore the somberness of the moment. In Therese Dreaming, she is pictured with arms raised and skirt lifted to show a touch of underwear. The eye moves downward from her closed lids, the gracefulness of her torso, to the red skirt and the slender length of her upraised leg, to confront a plump cat lapping at his saucer. There is an eroticism here but the dark somberness of the room’s surroundings give the rendering a formality that keeps the prurient aspect of it in check. Therese on a Bench Seat expresses the same lassitude of the other portraits but the way he has posed her, awkwardly balanced on a small bench and dangling as if for no reason a thin string (a riddle which is solved with a wall print of an earlier study that included her cat), creates a formal tension to the whole affair. The curator’s wall text indicates that future models “lack her distinct features, and Balthus’s portrayals of them do not plumb the same depths.”

Why was such early promise as a portrait artist diminished? Was Balthus escaping in his work from the early compulsions that Therese aroused in him in the immediate years that followed? Perhaps, he was. When World War II forced the family’s evacuation from Paris, he and his wife Antoinette de Watteville (a former model of the painter’s from Bern, Switzerland) took refuge in the Savoie, a free French zone where they found some peace and quietude. The farmstead they inhabited allowed him time to explore the pastoral possibilities of the place, even if it proved a less passionate preoccupation. The Salon I painting during this period is a respectable portrait of two girls. The seduction of sleep is hinted at where one subject is stretched out on the settee while the other stretches cat-like across the carpet, in the foreground. A crystal bowl of fruit reflects what afternoon light seeps into the scene, but it is only this and a tiny glint of light on the furniture legs that lend any animation to an otherwise lifeless scene.

Balthus possessed a real talent for capturing the play of light and shadow where he chose to use it. That quality is particularly evident in The Golden Days from 1944, a haunting picture of a young model, Odile Bugnon, that he was fond of posing. She languishes on a chaise longue, a hand mirror poised in one hand, to study her features. A fireplace fills the right background of the frame, with a shirtless man leaning in to kindle the blaze. Interestingly enough, the notes reveal that the model later remembered nothing of the fireplace at all. The painting does show that Balthus had not relinquished during the war years his power to disturb.

The Chassy Period in the 1950s, when Balthus lived in central France and was generously helped by Matisse’s art dealer son, Pierre, is represented by a number of paintings that are worth a careful look in his overall oeuvre. They do not, however, lend themselves to a coherent focus when taken in their entirety here. Individual works such as Girl at a Window, from 1955, are intricately textured pieces, conveying light and shade if not high contrast as central figures in his drama. A solitary girl is turned away from the viewer, her attention given over to the natural world beyond. The picture’s inherent charm is in her pose, her knee resting on a small chair almost as an afterthought. Was Balthus enamored with the works of Degas or Renoir during its execution? Hints at his predecessors have a way of surfacing with each study.

One of the most unusual renderings in the show is a large painting entitled The Moth, wherein a nude woman, given a hieratical treatment that shows the artist’s ongoing interest in classicism, is seen in profile, teasing a transparent-like moth in front of a chimney lantern. It is his only painting exhibiting a night scene. It reveals as well in the checkered side table and bedspread a concentration on pattern, reminiscent of Henri Matisse. A fresco effect is created here in the heavy build up of casein tempera. Another work, The Victim, gives the viewer just that with no explanation, save a knife discarded on the floor. Where is the assailant? The glazed expression in the subject’s eyes leaves us to wonder whether she is really dead or in a trance. It sets up a mystery but keeps us guessing. Also worth noting is the painting Game of Patience, which this time manages to hold the viewer spellbound with its exquisite composition. A young woman is poised over a table, studying her cards, while a cat engages a ball underneath the scene. The gracefulness and beauty of the work is enhanced by the pale wash of grays and beiges that unify every inch of the canvas.

The King of Cats

An early self-portrait from 1935, The King of Cats, makes it perfectly clear that Balthus had an unrelenting absorption in his life for the feline species. Not only do cats play a featured role in many of his paintings, but may even be placed as a symbolic sit-in presence for the artist himself. In the aforementioned self-portrait, a sign is placed beside the standing dandyish subject which reads: “A Portrait of H.M. The King of Cats, Painted by Himself.”

A large decorative panel from 1949, The Cat of La Méditerranée, is also displayed, showing a seaside diner with the head of a cat, presumably the artist, knife and fork poised to eat the rainbow arc of fish landing on his plate.

It is, however, the display of drawings in his childhood publication, Mitsou, that elucidate for us — in the first discovery and final disappearance of the boy’s cat — the lasting relevance that event had on this artist’s life. In their boldness and simplicity, these renderings exhibit the power of woodcuts by Frans Masereel and the compositional mastery of a Matisse. It is no wonder that Rilke recognized their strength. Kudos is in order for Ms. Rewald’s tireless efforts to track them down through Rilke’s heirs.

The lingering mysteries of Balthus remain. Perhaps a telegram sent to the Tate Gallery from the artist, as it prepared for its 1968 retrospective of his works, sums it up best: “NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS KNOWN. NOW LET US LOOK AT THE PICTURES. REGARDS. B.”

“Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations” runs until January 12, 2014. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 1000 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10028. For more information, you can call 212-535-7710 or visit the Web site at http://www.metmuseum.org.

Cincopa WordPress plugin

Featured Image: “Thérèse,” 1939. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo Courtesy of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.