Women reading: July

The July painting on my Women Reading calendar (see also 1st of each month this year) is August Macke's Elisabeth Reading, from 1911, towards the end of Macke's short life (1887-1914).  I love its clear, challenging, almost tropical colours, and the absolute elimination of everything superfluous. But there's something slightly sinister, too, about the blankness of everything, don't you think?

 

But what is she reading?  Well Macke was German, so one candidate would be Wellen (Waves), a novel by Eduard von Keyserling, first published in 1911.  According to Wikipedia (what do I know?), this is set during a long hot summer in a small fishing village somewhere on the Baltic.  It depicts a group of aristocratic city-dwellers spending their holidays in that remote part of the Empire (a far call from the Mediterranean feel of the painting!). Keyserling focuses on the follies of a doomed fin de siecle society whose self-imposed repressions eventually lead to catastrophe.

Or more realistically, it could be something written in the previous ten years - when a number of fine writers were just getting into their stride: might it be Robert Musil's Young Torless, or Thomas Mann's utterly wonderful Buddenbrooks?  Just too early for Kafka, sadly, or Mann's Death in Venice, which would suit the picture's mood rather well, I think.

Curiously, my calendar apparently prints this picture the wrong way round!  All the other references I can find show it this way, and there is no internal evidence that I can see.

Comments

[glo]

I commented on this the other day but the comment didn't appear on the blog apparently.
I was telling you that this painting typically belongs to a trend called "fauvisme", due to the very bright colours, "and the absolute elimination of everything superfluous", as you say. Their painting is also quite rough, there is no real perspective.
See also the works of Matisse, Derain, and de Vlaminck. And Matisse by the way lived by the Mediterranean See (in Nice, South of France).
They were dubbed the "fauves" (ie wild animals or wild cats) due to the daring vivid colours they used; these colours were new to their contemporaries and they were supposed to be aggressive.