Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)

Painted circa 1951, La Liseuse I belongs to a series of four paintings on the subject of a female reading, but is the most detailed and highly finished example. “Dressed in a Flemish costume, a young lady is shown reading, or rather leafing through, a book,” wrote Alain Blondel. “The background decor brings to mind the apartment in New York where Lempicka set herself up in 1942” (op. cit., p. 358). La Liseuse II (fig. 1), though painted only 2 years later circa 1953, depicts an abstracted figure, with black lines dividing the picture plane like stained glass. By circa 1956, Lempicka painted La Liseuse III (abstrait) (fig. 2), a further abstracted version of the subject, in which one can only make out the book at the center of the composition. La Liseuse IV completes the series circa 1960, this time bringing back the outline of the figure, though in a very schematic way.