Mathilde See - Bouquet Of Roses

“Mlle Mathilde Sée has flexibility, verve, diversity. She knows how to present with great refinement and taste her kinds of floral conversations, and in her home the rose and the periwinkle dialogue very spiritually with the old earthenware or the expensive glassware. "[1] It is in these laudatory terms that the art critic Arsène Alexandre described the art of Mathilde Sée on the occasion of her first exhibition organized at Georges Petit's in March 1909.
Nicknamed by her contemporaries the "queen of roses” or even “the Fragonard of roses”, Mathilde Sée was famous for her sure taste and her particular talent in arranging the floral compositions that she painted, much appreciated by amateurs. The rose, which was her favorite flower, was the motif of many variations, among which is this vase of pale roses.
If her representations of flowers place her in a tradition of painting described as feminine, her broad, free and supple style and the effects of pictorial material that characterize her paintings distinguish her from a production sometimes considered cutesy. However, this painting has a distinctive specificity that can refer to the female universe since its format was enlarged by the artist by adding a piece of canvas, which is reflected in the seam visible on the left border of the painting and in the inscription on the back. of the canvas: "widen / put a seam".

[1] Arsène Alexandre, “Artistic Life”, Le Figaro, March 6, 1909, p.7.