MASTERPIECES FROM THE BEN URI COLLECTION
CHAÏM SOUTINE (1893-1943)
JEUNE SERVANTE (WAITING MAID, ALSO KNOWN AS LA SOUBRETTE)
1933 Oil on canvas
Signed lower right: Soutine
CHAÏM SOUTINE
Chaïm Soutine’s Eune Servante (Waiting Maid or La Soubrette) exemplifies his radical approach to portraiture, where psychological expression takes precedence over naturalistic representation Painted during the late 1920s, this work belongs to a significant series depicting working-class figures in uniform cooks, bellboys, maids
capturing the humanity of individuals who are often overlooked. Here, Soutine’s subject, a maid in starched white apron, is rendered with a powerful emotional intensity and a distorted, expressionist aesthetic. The maid’s flushed face, asymmetrical features, and bowed expression evoke both physical fatigue and an internalised sense of resignation Soutine’s brushwork is vigorous and impulsive, layering swathes of impasto to build volume and texture, especially in the exaggerated white of the apron The background remains ambiguous, swirling into abstraction, with only the faint suggestion of domestic space In line with Soutine’s broader project, the subject is not idealised but imbued with a raw immediacy his gestural distortions elevate the servant to a figure of tragic dignity This painting speaks to Soutine’s own marginalised identity as a Jewish émigré artist living in near destitution in Paris. His portraits of servants become indirect self-portraits meditations on status, suffering, and resilience testifying to his belief in the expressive power of the human face, regardless of social rank.
Chaïm Soutine (né Chaim-Iche Solomonovich Sutin) was born to a poor Jewish family, the tenth of eleven children, in the shtetl of Smilovitz, Russian Empire (now Smilavičy, Belarus) on 13 January 1893, and drew from an early age He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Vilna (1910-13), and in the Atelier Cormon at the
École desBeaux-Arts, Paris (1913–15), becoming closely associated with the group of foreign-born, predominantly Jewish artists, known as the 'École de Paris'. The majority including Marc Chagall, Isaac Dobrinsky, Jacques Lipchitz lived and worked together in great poverty in the studios known as La Ruche ('the Beehive') near the old Vaugirard slaughterhouses of Montparnasse In 1915 Lipchitz introduced Soutine to Amedeo Modigliani with whom he developed a strong friendship During the First World War Soutine enlisted in the work brigades but was soon dismissed on health grounds, having developed the stomach problems which would later kill him
His oeuvre includes a number of powerful, visceral landscapes and an important series of Rembrandt-inspired beef carcasses painted in a characteristic, expressionistic style. The American collector Albert Barnes bought a significant amount of Soutine’s work in 1923, affording him financial stability for the first time He held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Bing, Paris in 1927 In 1928 Waldemar George published the first monograph on Soutine as part of 'les artistes juifs' series; Elie Faure's followed a year later In this period Soutine produced a series of bold character studies of pastry cooks, choirboys, boot boys, bell-boys and maids, dressed in the uniforms of their professions From then on, he worked mainly in Paris, spending the summers near Chartres with his patrons Marcellin and Madeleine Castaing Following the outbreak of the Second World War and the German Occupation, Soutine sought refuge from occupied Paris in Touraine in 1941, using a false identity card, but in 1943, suffering from a rapid decline in health, he was forced to return to Paris for an operation on his perforated stomach ulcers and died shortly afterwards on 9 August 1943 His work is in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Courtauld and Tate, and in numerous international collections including in Paris, New York and Switzerland
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
COLLECTION: https://benuri org/collections/
BURU: https://www buru org uk/
