 My name is Nancy Eisen, I'm the Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes Foundation and you're joining me for Barnes Takeout, your daily serving of art. Now today we're in Room 16 of the Foundation and we're looking at the West Wall, which admittedly is not the most spectacular of walls, a lot of it is taken up by the doors, but if you look to your right, I promise that we're in for a treat. There's two pictures, one by a female artist, a woman called Marie Laurent Sehn, which is at the top, and then just beneath it, another picture that was made in Paris by Chaim Soutin, which was made around 1919 and it's of a pastry chef. And let's focus right in on this work now. What an extraordinary painting this is. Look at all those wonderful colors, the reds, the yellows, whites, blues, violets. Soutin is an incredible painter, he has a real sense of the texture of paint. You can see that sometimes he works wet colour onto wet colour, sometimes he uses almost as if it's the back of the brush, just to create little details, perhaps like this delineated eye here. And really he's a painter's painter and we know that Barnes was really taken with the way that Soutin worked. He was in Paris in 1922 and he came across works by Soutin and very quickly he purchased a great deal of them. Now, a couple of people who Barnes worked with took credit for introducing Barnes to Soutin. One was the dealer Paul Guillaume, who Barnes purchased much of his collection through. And another was an art dealer called Leopold Zawraski, who was a Polish art dealer and who dealt mostly with works by Mordiliani. And whichever is true, we do know for sure that this work was purchased from Paul Guillaume for the price of 3,000 francs, so are quite a modest sum compared to what Barnes was paying for other artists at that time. But really, this was incredibly important to Soutin because he went from being a struggling artist to somebody who really had a market and from fairly modest sales throughout the 1920s, his prices multiplied and he very importantly gained an audience in America. What to make of this painting? Well, we know that it was made in the South of France because of who it shows. As we can see, the subject is a pastry chef, a young man wearing a hat, wearing white overalls and seated on a chair. And we know that this was a young apprentice who worked in one of the Grand Hotels in the South of France. The boy's name was Rémyl, he was 17 years old. And he later recalled that he sat six times for Soutin and he was given 10 sews per sitting. And later he regretted that he didn't accept a painting instead. Apparently Soutin had offered to give him a painting. But thinking that Soutin's painting was really very bad, Rémyl decided instead that he would take the money. Soutin had a real interest in painting people who worked behind the scenes in hotels, whether they were bell hops, whether they were chambermaids. And this is a subject he comes back to time and time again. But what's interesting, and you can see it really well in this picture, is that he doesn't show these people at work. Here we see the young sitter in an almost regal pose. He's on this chair, he's holding something in his hands. He's looking directly at us. There's something quite confrontational about the image. And really there's nothing humble about this worker. Now, Soutin wasn't originally from Paris. He was born in 1893 in Lithuania, which was then a part of Tsarist Russia. So really he'd come very far to train in Paris. And from there to be taken on solely but surely by a dealer, Zobrowski, Rodiliani's dealer, took him down to the south of France. First of all, during the First World War to avoid the bombing. And there becomes this really kind of strong connection with that area. But really, if it hadn't been for America, Soutin might have ended up being relatively unknown. Barnes purchased this wonderful painting and then a great deal more within the following weeks. By December 1922, he has over 50 works by Soutin. And really, Barnes doesn't just do this because he sees in Soutin a sense of tradition. He also does it because he really feels that this is a good investment. Barnes is a businessman. And today we have 21 works by Soutin at the Barnes. So although he keeps many for himself over the years, he sells them at the right time. And we see too that there are many different exhibitions of Soutin's work in America in the following years. So Barnes really starts something. He is something of a trendsetter. We know too that this painting was important to the way that art was taught at the Barnes Foundation. Now, Barnes, as I mentioned, was very interested in traditions. And so this pose that we see the figure in, this three-quarter view of the body, the chair in the background, the way in which we see the sitter's hands, you know, all of this places the work within traditions of portraiture. So this really would have made sense to Barnes. But also it helped to demonstrate formal balance. And Violetta DiMazia, who actually taught with Barnes at the Foundation and helped him build the collection at various stages, said once in a recording that we still have now, that this picture might make you feel sick in terms of the riot of color. And I think there she's talking about this sort of sense of movement that we get through the canvas. But very funnily, and to quote her, she says, too bad for you if it makes you feel uneasy. The fact that you might get travel sick doesn't mean that a plane or a train is a bad thing. And what she was getting a sense of here is that this is something progressive. This is something moving forward. And it still feels incredibly fresh today. It's it's such a startling picture and one that we are very, very glad to have in the Foundation. Now, we're really looking forward to focusing more closely on Soutine because in March of 2021, so coming up relatively soon, we are working on a wonderful exhibition that looks at Soutine in partnership with Willem de Kooning. So two artists from different moments in time from very different backgrounds but who have a real visual affinity. Willem de Kooning came to the Barnes Foundation in 1952 and saw works by Soutine and was really overwhelmed by them. Soutine was already one of his favorite artists. He discovered him in New York and there were touching points within their lifestyles. Willem de Kooning came originally from the Netherlands. He made his life in America. There was an affinity there to an artist who had come from Eastern Europe and had made his life in Paris. Really, this sense of struggle and also a kind of connection to the figure for all the abstraction that we see in the pastry chef within the clothing, within the background. And I just want to focus here on these wonderful circles which seem to sort of balance out with these this huge ear that the sitter has. All of this really means that although, you know, Soutine here is testing what you can do with the representation of something. And yet it never loses the figure. There's always this wonderful human quality, a real kind of concentration. And we see this too in de Kooning's work even in the 50s and 60s as he's becoming more and more abstract. So as I say, it's nice to have something to look forward to. Do come and see the exhibition. It opens in March of 2021. And in the meantime, let's just enjoy Soutine. Enjoy this intense look at a very regular guy. And please, when we do open our doors, come and have a close look at it in the gallery. Room 16 is the place. And be tuned in for more Barnes Takeout tomorrow. Thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.