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Schwabe, Carlos - La femme au luth
Identifier
008081
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Description by Christie's
La femme au Luth depicts a winged maiden in brilliant green, startled by the viewer, as she plays a lute in a walled garden cascading with pink blossom. Schwabe's attention to botanical detail can be compared to the earlier work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Britain. This desire for precision is indicative of a response across the arts to the atmosphere of scientific progress in the latter half of the 19th Century.
The critic for Art et Décoration compared Schwabe to Dürer and wrote: 'In the reverberation of his faculties, all of which are excited at the same time, the reflections of tragic, bizarre and mysterious dreams are mixed under the artist's fingers, in which one deciphers the symbolic signs of confused destinies and, at the same time, infinitely touching refinements of feeling'.
So there you go. The symbolism can be found via the links.