The lady with the puppet
Félicien Rops, 1885
The Lady with the Puppet is a work by Félicien Rops dated 1885, executed in mixed media on paper with watercolour, pastel, gouache and pencil. It belongs to the fin-de-siècle climate and to Symbolism, and it forms part of a series of compositions on the same theme that began in 1873 and was revisited in 1877. According to the sources, it was made to illustrate a text by Octave Uzanne titled Her Highness Woman.
The scene shows a standing woman who smiles as she lifts a limp puppet with a torn cloth body, while holding a bloodied dagger in her other hand. Gold coins spill from the doll's tear, an allusion to the mercenary bonds between men and women. In the background stand a fountain, a serpent with an apple in its mouth and a winged jester, recognisable as Eros, though here he holds a deathly sceptre instead of arrows. On the platform, a relief of artists and scholars at work bears the Latin inscription "Ubi Mulier?", meaning "Where is the woman?".
Rops plays with the image of the puppet on several levels: the man manipulated by the woman, the woman manipulated by the devil, and both as playthings of death and madness. This chain of symbols gives the work its melancholic tone.
- Painter
- Félicien Rops
- Date
- 1885
- Medium
- paper, pencil, pastel, gouache paint, charcoal, colored pencil
- Dimensions
- 38 × 26 cm
- Museum
- King Baudouin Foundation
- Depicts
- puppet