Femme sur un divan noir

Henner came from Alsace, and in 1865 he painted this reclining nude against a divan so dark it nearly swallows the background, throwing all the light onto the pale body. He showed it at the Paris Salon of 1869, where the reclining female nude was the safest, most expected subject a young painter could offer, respectable if you gave it a classical or literary excuse, awkward if you didn't. Henner mostly skips the excuse and lets the flesh and the black do the work. The widow of a Mulhouse industrialist, Daniel Dollfus, bought it that same year for the city's collection, back in his native Alsace. It hangs there still, among more than 40 of his paintings the museum holds.