Little-known portrait joins show

HARTFORD, CT (PNAN) – A portrait by Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, 1908-2001), Portrait of Mrs. Cooley, explores a crucial phase of the artist’s career. The painting joins two related paintings by the artist in the exhibition, “The Spell of the Studio: Balthus’ “Portrait of Mrs. Cooley” which is on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art through February 26, 2023.

“Portrait of Mrs. Cooley is a remarkable and deeply moving work. It brilliantly captures the American sitter’s forlornness and unease in a foreign environment. This strong sense of alienation, rendered through techniques reminiscent of older French artists such as, Courbet and Millet allows this painting to speak to us in a truly timeless manner,” said Oliver Tostmann, the Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth.

     Portrait of Mrs. Cooley (1937, Private Collection) portrays the artist’s first American sitter, Hartford-born Jane Cooley. It was painted during her first visit to France on the occasion of her honeymoon.

Curator James Thrall Soby was the leading force in acquiring works by Balthus during the 1930s and his legendary collection of modern art included key works by the French artist and the Portrait of Mrs. Cooley is closely related to the Wadsworth’s Still Life (1937, a rare and unusually charged still life, bought by the museum in 1938 as well as the first painting by Balthus acquired by any museum, pointing to his rising success.

A third painting, The Bernese Hat (1938, Wadsworth Atheneum), an intimate portrait of Balthus’s wife Antoinette de Watteville, exudes a similar air of ambiguity. Balthus created all three paintings in the years leading up to World War II, using his austere studio space as his staging ground.

The intimate closeness of the three paintings allows for a reassessment of this crucial time in Balthus’s career and demonstrates how the young artist came into his own. While archival documents from the Wadsworth illustrate the painter’s surprising success in Hartford, The Spell of the Studio reveals the ambivalent and nonetheless persistent relationship between Balthus and his audiences.

For more information on this addition to the exhibit, call 860.278.2670 or see: www.thewadsworth.org.

"The Spell of the Studio: Balthus’ “Portrait of Mrs. Cooley”Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art