Jeune Servante (Waiting Maid, also known as La Soubrette)

In Jeune Servante (Waiting Maid) Soutine focuses on a single subject against an unadorned background, an anonymous, working-class figure in uniform painted with typically expressive and tactile brushwork. The painting also has a second title, La Soubrette (referring to a coquettish character derived from operetta), which - possibly to encourage sales - was given when the work was offered for sale in London in 1938 in a show entitled The Tragic Painters at Alex, Reid & Lefevre Ltd., when it was also dated to c.1925, although the original title seems closer to the artist's intentions. Working direct from the life, Soutine captured an expression somewhere between weariness, wariness and submission, but drew attention to the maid’s inner life by emphasising her individuality. His virtuoso paint handling illuminates her white apron with a dazzling display of colour. This portrait relates to Soutine’s series of powerful character studies of pastry cooks, choirboys, boot boys, bell-boys and maids, dressed in the uniforms of their professions, in exaggerated poses ranging from awkwardness to arrogance. From the 1930s Soutine’s figure paintings became less frenzied and more meditative. La Soubrette was unveiled in 2012 at the exhibition, From Russia to Paris: Chaïm Soutine and his Contemporaries. It is one of only seven Soutines in British museum collections.