LA MOUSME
By VINCENT VAN GOGH
A MOST sympathetic portrait in which VAN GOGH has tried to combine the subtlest painting of nuanced tones in atmosphere & light with his new joyous sentiment of pure colour & large, strong contrasts.
The first quality we see in the delicate modelling of the face, with little touches of warm & cool tones, with almost imperceptible differences, as in the painting of the upper lip against the surrounding skin, the whole suggesting by its soft transitions and pallor a corres ponding feminine quality.
The light background toned with a delicately emergent greenness belongs to the same family of colour. Against these rare phantom tones sing the intense. abundant stripes & spots of orange, blue, & red, in the costume of the girl.
Beautiful are the tempering, more neutral colours of the arches of the chair the dark pole of the background colour. The chair together with the hands break up the immensity of the spotted skirt into striking areas whose rhythm continues into the light green area in the lower right a subdivision in sharpest contrast to the simplicity of the upper body, yet tied to the latter through the curved and alternating stripes of the bodice.
The silhouette as always with VAN GOGH is vigorous and interestingly contrived. Many fine little touches of colour show his alertness as a composer, the bit of blue on the collar, the dark violet & greenish tones in the hair, the blue strokes in the left eye and between the lips, the ochres in the ear & the jaw, the long curved file of modelled orange buttons which rise from the ornamental Alat orange spots below, & isolated against the cool greenish background, the dainty bizarre ends of red ribbon.
Of the subject, VAN GOGH wrote to his brother:
"If you know what a 'mousmé is (you will know when you have read Loti's Madame Chrysanthème), I have just painted one ... A 'mousmé' is a Japanese girl-Provençal in this case-12 to 14 years old.. "
VINCENT VAN GOGH PAINTINGS