Female Nude (A Political Allegory)
Artist
Alejandro Ferrant y Fischermans
(Spanish, 1843 - 1917)
Date1885
Object number62.0278
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions57 7/8 × 110 1/4 in. (147 × 280 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineMuseo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.
Collections
On View
Not on viewDescriptionFerrant depicted his only known female nude resting atop a crashing wave along with a tattered French flag. The painting was previously registered as The Fall of the French Republic '78, but given that no such event occurred in either 1778 or 1878, it could be a misreading of 1870, the year France's Second Empire fell under Bonaparte. The work could also be a reference to Paul Baudry's The Pearl and the Wave (1862), which also juxtaposes a female nude with a crashing wave. Given Spanish painters' rather ambivalent attitude towards France in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the true meaning behind this painting remains unclear.
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