A painting by Franz Kupka, a Czech avant-garde painter living in Paris. The painting is a mixture of realism and abstraction. Called The Yellow Scale, it depicts a portrait, but the painting technique consists of a feast of violent slashes of yellow impasto. This was a work of the transitional stage of Kupka's oeuvre when he moved from an impressionistic style to the world of abstraction.
In the painting we see a supremely bored male individual, staring at us with a stern expression on his green-tinted face, a wisp of black hair sweeping across a wide brow, lounging back in a yellow dressing gown, his head resting against a large soft pillow in an oriental cane armchair. There is a self-rolled cigarette in the semi-salute of his upraised left hand, whilst his right hand's first finger rests in the opening of a yellow-covered Charpentier paperback on his lap.
Who is this lounger? It is no other than Charles Baudelaire, the French decadent poet, based on one of Nadar's daguerreotype photographs.
(From a review by B.J. Gilbert)
Renaud Camus, Emilia D., and 97 other people added this photo to their favorites.
ashley & traci 55 months ago | reply
I adore this painting. It's in the Museum of Fine Arts here, and it usually not very popular at all, unbelievably. It's in a small corner overwhelmed by the Picassos and Monets nearby, amongst many great others. However, this one is undeniably fantastic for me. Although I have to disagree with Gilbert on whether or not he looks bored; quite to the contrary, in my opinion. Funny, though, I don't know if I forgot who this was or if I ever knew, but I kind of guessed it was a self-portrait. The ironic musing, I suppose, and the imperial color choice.
miss. yancey 41 months ago | reply
How funny I should find you here... I do believe this is a self portrait, though. See dear Kupka as an old man: prague-stay.com/img/3511/15/false/prague-famous-czechs-fr...
very similar...
LineLineDot 33 months ago | reply
That yellow is so violent...
crzy_ella 25 months ago | reply
this is one of my favorite pieces at the MFAH along side Corn Poppy (by Kees Van Dongen)