Lot 58 D

This double-sided painting unites two disciplines mastered by Mela Muter: landscape and portrait.
In 1940 the war drove Mela Muter to flee from Paris to southern France, where she lived in Avignon part of the time and created striking views of the city. This magnificent panorama captures its spatial context from an elevated vantage point and shows the historic city in a warm atmosphere flooded with light. The olive trees and simple residential buildings in the foreground lead us to the two arms of the Rhône. To the right in the middle ground, on the near riverbank, rises the silhouette of the Tour Philippe-le-Bel, which once marked the border between the Kingdom of France and the Papal Territory of Avignon. The ruin of the Pont Saint-Bénézet can be recognised above the second arm of the river; the town’s medieval core stretches out behind it, crowned by the monumental walls and towers of the papal palace. Muter mastered the depiction of this complex, many-layered landscape; organic natural forms and the cubic contours of buildings merge into a harmonious unity. The use of warm tones of white and ochre that seem to reflect the sun as well as the accents in fresh blue and red are characteristic of her views from southern France.
The artist’s emotional connection with the theme of motherhood becomes clear in the double portrait on the other side. Depictions of women with their children, often from the most modest social classes, are among her most common subjects. The seated mother forms a single compositional unit with the small child on her lap, and the cool, nuanced variety of flesh tones as well as the blue tones of the clothing further underscore this bond. The mother’s downturned face and the earnest gaze of her child exclude any kind of sentimentality; representational details like the dots on the blouse and the cross window shimmering through the white curtains situate the scene in the midst of life.