Between Poses

Alice Pike Barney's oil painting depicts a male model at rest between studio sessions. The figure sits in profile against a loosely rendered background of greens and golds, his musculature rendered in soft pastels and earth tones. A piece of drapery and what appears to be fruit rest nearby—studio props awaiting the next pose. Barney (1857–1931), an Ohio-born painter active in New York and Paris, specialized in portraiture and figure studies. Her treatment of the male nude combines academic training with the softer, more impressionistic handling that marked early 20th-century American studio practice.