The White and the Black

The White and the Black is a reworking by Félix Vallotton, the Franco-Swiss painter, dated 1913. It deliberately draws on two landmarks of nineteenth-century French painting: Manet's Olympia and Ingres's Odalisque with a Slave. Yet the treatment is quite different. In those earlier works the white woman and the Black servant reinforced a hierarchy; here the roles are reversed. The dark-skinned figure, seated and smoking a cigarette, is the one who commands the composition, while the red-haired woman lying on the bed appears relaxed and unprovocative. Vallotton removes any exotic detail and avoids erotic suggestion, so the nude feels sober and far from seductive. The scene is deliberately ambiguous: it can be read as a relationship of dominance or as a love between two women. It is often suggested that the painting reflects the artist's sense of the approaching end of European imperialism and the early stirrings of African independence movements, though this remains a conjecture. The work can be seen today at the Villa Flora in Winterthur.

Painter

Félix Vallotton

Date

1913

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

114 × 147 cm

Museum

Villa Flora, Winterthur

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