Woman with Red Hair

“Woman with Red Hair is the most sensual, sensuously painted, and fully developed portrait Carles painted of his French red-headed model Angele,” says art historian Barbara Wolanin. “Rather than flattening the figure into an abstract composition, Carles artfully caught his model's features in near-profile, showing her drape sliding suggestively off her shoulder.” Painted probably in Paris, the portrait exemplifies Carles’s interest in color play and his fascination with the French movement of fauvism, from the French word for “wild beast,” a term applied by critics discomfited by the movement’s use of strong, non-naturalistic colors.  

Born in Philadelphia, Carles had a staggering impact on the development of American modernism and abstract painting both through his own work and his role as a teacher. He was a powerful and controversial instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts who embraced the modern age and introduced his students to the work and ideas of the European avant-garde. Paintings by several of his students are in Woodmere’s collection, including Quita Brodhead, Jane Piper, Faye Swengel Badura, Bernard Badura, Jessie Drew-Bear, Elizabeth Godshalk Burger, Morris Blackburn, and Leon Kelly.

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