126. Xavier Mellery, Young Peasant Girl
| Artist | Xavier Mellery, Belgian, Laeken (Brussels) 1845–Brussels 1921 |
| Title, Date | Young Peasant Girl (Jeune paysanne), not dated |
| Medium | Charcoal and white chalk over gray wash |
| Dimensions | 18 1/4 × 9 1/2 in. (46.4 × 24.1 cm) |
| Inscriptions + Marks | Upper left: XM |
| Provenance | [Galerie Maurice Tzwern–Pandora, Brussels, until 1993; to Weisberg]; Yvonne and Gabriel Weisberg, Minneapolis |
| Exhibition History | "The Quieter Image: 19th Century European Drawings and Watercolors," Carleton Art Gallery, Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., 1996, no. 34; "Expanding the Boundaries: Selected Drawings from the Yvonne and Gabriel P. Weisberg Collection," Mia (2008) and Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Ind. (2010); "The World at Work: Images of Labor and Industry, 1850 to Now," Mia, 2012; "Reflections on Reality: Drawings and Paintings from the Weisberg Collection," Mia, 2022–23 |
| References | Lisa Dickinson Michaux with Gabriel P. Weisberg, "Expanding the Boundaries: Selected Drawings from the Yvonne and Gabriel P. Weisberg Collection" (exh. cat.), Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis, 2008), pp. 40–41, fig. 21 and front flap |
| Credit Line | Promised gift of Gabriel P. and Yvonne M.L. Weisberg, Minneapolis |
In this highly detailed study, a young woman seemingly waits to learn what chores her employer has in mind for her today. Specifics like her torn apron and unkempt hair, combined with her anxious expression, reveal Xavier Mellery to be an intense observer of the real world. He has isolated the figure against an interior wall of a room, perhaps a kitchen, in effect creating an icon of the lower classes, whose position in nineteenth-century Belgian society afforded little respite from work or hope for escape. It is a remarkable work, in both its large size and the kind of attention devoted to a young woman so clearly constrained by her station in life. The drawing exemplifies Mellery’s realist work prior to his transition to Symbolism.
GPW