Reclining nude with guitar player - Albert Weisgerber

The museum director wrote about the painting—newly acquired from the Munich art trade in 1983—that "The reclining female nude, accompanied by a singing guitar player, is a lusciously fresh work of art in its composition…"; this set a voyeuristic tone, turning the woman into an object. Is that truly the case? Did the painter Albert Weisgerber, who was born in 1878 in St. Ingbert in Saarland and died at the front line in 1915, also see it that way?

The motif is part of Weisgerber's series of studio paintings, which depict models and painters or studio visitors who have absolutely nothing to do with each other, such as the singer and the model here. One wonders whether he even sees or can see her at all. The naked woman lies at the front edge of the picture, taking up its entire width, and looking directly at the viewer.

By way of Manet’s Olympia (1863) the painting references Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538, Uffizi): in both pictures the undeniably beautiful nude woman is positioned in front of a curtain that runs parallel to the image plane and takes up half the width of the picture, closing off the room at the back. She is stretched out on a white sheet and piled up cushions. She is propped up on her front arm, while her other hand rests on her pubic area, her legs are crossed, and with an alert, open, and perhaps inviting gaze she looks at the observer.

Or does Weisgerber's nude look vacant and disillusioned? Who is the voyeur: the museum director, the painter, the guitarist, or us, the viewers of the image? Is the woman a melancholy model, a self-assured modern woman, or a seasoned prostitute—or is she simply Weisgerber's vision of female beauty? A vision that is, of course, just one of a long series of depictions of Venus by artists like Giorgione (Sleeping Venus, 1508/10), Titian (Venus of Urbino, 1538), Goya (The Naked Maya, 1800), and Manet (Olympia, 1863)?