Haïdée
Artist
Charles Chaplin
(French, 1825-1891)
CultureFrench
Date1873
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 40 x 25 1/2 in. (101.6 x 64.8 cm)
Overall, Frame: 50 1/2 x 36 in. (128.3 x 91.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 50 1/2 x 36 in. (128.3 x 91.4 cm)
InscribedCh. Chaplin 1873
Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number71.2063
Collections
Not on view
DescriptionOil on canvas painting. It depicts the young, greek woman from Byron's Don Juan novel. It is a life-size figure of Haïdée, seen to the waist, and a tambourine is in her right hand.Label TextCharles Chaplin French, 1825–1891 Haïdée, 1873 Oil on canvas In Lord Byron’s epic poem Don Juan (1818–24), the hero is shipwrecked on a remote island and nursed back to health by a young Greek woman named Haïdée. The gentle girl and Don Juan secretly marry, but ultimately she cannot protect him from her father, a vicious pirate and slave-trader. Here Charles Chaplin contrasts the girl’s innocent expression with her exotic, revealing costume to heighten sexual tension. Finding such themes shallow, critic Charles Baudelaire derided Chaplin in 1859 as a leader in “the cult of the pretty.” Nonetheless, while other artists began to favor modern subjects and experimental painting techniques, paintings of beautiful maidens from literature and mythology by Chaplin, Bouguereau, and their contemporaries continued to seduce many viewers and collectors. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2063 ProvenanceCatharine Lorillard Wolfe; Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1887; Deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum, 1955-1956; Parke-Bernet sale, 1956; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum, 1971. Exhibition History"Behind the Seen: The Chrysler's Hidden Museum," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., October 21, 2005 - February 19, 2006. Published ReferencesBryson Burroughs, _The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings_ ninth ed., New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1931, 50.
