Thérèse rêvant  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Thérèse rêvant [1] (Thérèse Dreaming) is a 1938 painting by Balthus. The painting depicts a young girl, very young perhaps. She sits on a chair, reclines, her eyes closed, her hands laced together and resting on top of her head. Her head is turned, in three-quarter profile, and her legs are parted (one pulled up resting on the chair), unself-consciously, showing parts of her white panties.

The painting hangs at the Met.

Thérèse Blanchard, whom Balthus painted eleven times between 1936 and 1939, was the model for the painting.

Yevgeniya Traps wrote an essay where she had Lolita's Humbert Humbert reimagine Thérèse as Dorothy:

"I wonder what Therese dreams of, what Therese’s dreamlife is like. In the picture, she seems to be daydreaming, not really dreaming. She is not sleeping, though her eyes are closed, though her head is thrown back, though she seems unaware of the room around her. Still, her posture suggests that she is not fully relaxed, has not fully abandoned herself, has not given herself up fully. And somewhere, off to the side, is the invisible presence of Balthus watching her: her brown bob, her upturned nose, her red skirt hiked up to reveal white panties. It is an undeniably sexual image. Balthus’s preoccupation with young, nubile, sexualized girls is well-known and well-documented. We imagine we know the dreams Balthus dreams of Therese. "--(Not) Dreaming of Taras by Yevgeniya Traps