Reclining Nude

By 1909 Gestel was deep in what the Dutch were calling luminism, and this reclining figure is one of his experiments with it. He worked in dots of pure colour in the pointillist manner, but with a stubborn difference. Where the French neo-impressionists wanted their dots to fuse in the eye into one smooth field, Gestel wanted his to stay visible as separate marks, each holding its own colour. So the body is openly assembled from flecks of green, rose and blue, and he set it against the light, the brightest glare falling behind the figure so she reads as a warm shape turned into the sun.