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3. Chaste Suzanne. (#000783)

From the same.

Table 7 feet 6 inches high, by 6 feet 2 inches wide.

In the center of the canvas, we see Susanna seated; she has just got out of the bath. Placed between the two old men, she is leaning towards the one on the left, and abandons to the gaze of the one on the right her beautiful arm, her beautiful shoulders, her loins, one of her thighs, her whole head, three-quarters of her charms. Her head is turned upside down; her eyes, turned skyward, cry out for help; her left arm holds back the cloths covering her upper thighs; her right hand pushes away the left arm of the old man on this side. The beautiful figure¹! Her stance is great²; her turmoil, her pain, are strongly expressed; she is drawn with great taste³ ; they are true flesh, the most beautiful color, and all full of [36] truths of nature spread over the neck, the throat, the knees; her legs, her thighs, all her undulating limbs could not be better placed; there is grace without detracting from nobility, variety without any affectation of contrast. The half-tone part of the figure is beautifully done. This white linen spread over the thighs reflects admirably on the flesh, it's a mass of light that doesn't destroy the effect: a difficult magic that shows both the master's skill and the vigor of his coloring.

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The old man on the left⁴ is seen in profile. His left leg is bent, and with his right knee he seems to be pressing against the underside of Suzanne's thigh. His left hand pulls at the cloth covering her thighs, and his right hand invites Suzanne to yield. This old man has a false air of Henri IV⁵. This head character is well chosen, but it needed more movement, more action, more desire, more expression. It's a figure, cold, heavy, and offering only a large, stiff, uniform garment, with no folds, under which nothing emerges: it's a bag from which a head and two arms emerge. It should be draped wide no doubt⁶, but it's not like that.

The other old man is standing and seen almost from the front. With his left hand, he has pushed aside all the veils that robbed him of the Susanna on his side; he still holds those veils aside. His right hand and his arm stretched out in front of the woman have a threatening gesture; it's also the expression on his face. This one is even colder than the other: cover the rest of the canvas, and this figure will show you nothing more than a Pharisee⁷ proposing some difficulty to Jesus Christ⁸.

More warmth, more violence, more outburst in the [37] old men, would have given prodigious interest to this innocent, beautiful woman, delivered to the mercy of two old scoundrels; she herself would have more terror and expression from it, as everything drags along. The passions on the canvas match and mismatch like the colors. Overall, there is a harmony of feeling and tone. With the old men more pressing, the painter would have felt that the woman must be more frightened, and soon her gazes would have made the sky an altogether different instance⁹.

On the right we see a grayish stone factory; it's apparently a reservoir, a bathing apartment; on the front a canal from which gushes to the right a petty, tasteless little jet of water that breaks the silence. If the old men had had all the outburst imaginable and the Suzanne all the analogous terror, I don't know whether the hiss, the sound of a mass of water rushing with force would not have been a very true prop.

With these flaws, this composition by Vanloo is still a beautiful thing. De Troye painted the same subject¹⁰. There is scarcely an old painter whose imagination it has not captured and whose brush it has not kept busy; and I bet Vanloo's painting holds its own amidst all that has been done. It is claimed that the Suzanne is academicized¹¹; could it be that her action has some primer, that the movements are a little too cadenced¹² for a violent situation? Or is it rather that sometimes the model is so well posed, that this study position can be successfully transported to the canvas, however it is recognized? If there's a more violent action on the part of the old men, there may also be a more natural, truer action on the part of Susanna. But as it is I'm [38] happy with it, and if I had the misfortune to live in a palace, this piece might well move from the artist's studio into my gallery.

An Italian painter¹³ has very ingeniously composed this subject. He has placed the two old men on the same side. Susanna wears all her drapery on this side, and to hide from the eyes of the old men, she gives herself over entirely to the viewer's eyes. This composition is very free, and nobody is hurt by it; it's because the obvious intention saves everything, and the viewer is never of the subject.

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Since I've seen this Suzanne by Vanloo, I wouldn't know how to look at the one by our friend the Baron d'Holbach; it is, however, by Bourdon¹⁴.

This Suzanne by Vanloo is not sold. It could be had, I think, for four or five thousand francs; but there would be little time to lose¹⁵.

Notes