Model Resting - Frans Schwartz (1850-1915)

Emotional representation of the graceful rest of a nude model asleep in her armchair, protecting herself from the light with a sheet.
The impressionist treatment of the subject makes the body emerge sensually from the background in a very monochrome palette, as if the subject were emerging from the material in the manner of a sculpture.

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1850, Frans Schwartz entered the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He studied there for six years. Following an 1878 painting trip to Spain with fellow artists, Schwartz founded a private art school.
In later years, he received important commissions for monumental wall and ceiling decorations in Frederiksborg Castle and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. In addition to large altar paintings, Schwartz was commissioned to paint a mural of The Wise and Foolish Virgins. He painted this for the Soldenfeldt Foundation, and it was considered by many to be his greatest work.
Schwartz died in 1917. Fortunately for the art community, he had donated his entire fortune towards a scholarship for the artistic enhancement of Copenhagen’s public buildings.