Woman in Blue reading a letter (2020)

When one turns from Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window to Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, the unresolved tensions that charge the former scene seem to fade away in the tranquil space the woman in blue inhabits. Gone is the opening window, the formidable shadow or the reflection of the girl, the crowded space of onlookers, and the contrasting colors, textures, and sensations. Instead, one is left in close proximity to her. She is the center, the focus of one’s attention, and the portal from which feelings travel. She performs the only action in the painting, drawing her arms close to her sides, holding and reading a letter that speaks of a matter close to her heart. She holds it so firmly that even her knuckles whiten under pressure. But the letter displays no sign of tension. It gently curves between her hands, leaving the unread part dangling in symmetric folds.

All seems calm and undisturbed, if not suspended, at her moment of reading. She stands unmoving like a boat anchored at shore. Everything in the room gives off an impression of a space carefully arranged, permanently still. Only her blue silken garment seems to be in motion. It loosely rounds her with a soft, tremulous light that sets its front shimmering and swelling like a morning wave casting a film of water over the shore. Darkness washes down her back, eddying around the room, and engulfing an entire corner to her left. With that light and shadow, she completes the palette of the painting. The shades of blue and brown on her dress find their companion in the chairs and the map. Even her cast of form and feature, her complexion, and her general air of repose suggest a sense of wholeness and completeness. Her expression of reading the letter is a mix of urgency and patience. Her parted lips, now suggesting a breath or a moment passing by, poised motionless as if the reading could take on eternity. Her pregnancy further adds solidity to her figure, assuring her with the promise of a definite future. It is by this sense of self-assurance, of wholeness and completion, that Woman in Blue dissolves the complexities of the Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

But the complexities between light and dark, anticipation and anxiety, transience and timelessness are by no means gone. They merely fade into a muted expression of dialectics, of harmony with absence and presence, of things distant and near becoming one, of feelings temporarily and permanently delivered to a single moment of interiority. Here, in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, the map, the extra chair, the unseen window, and the unknown source of light complement the longing that she feels from reading the letter. These objects carry her longing to a world that exists beyond the limits of our vision. But their presence before our eyes serves as a reminder of her inner fullness, for when she reads the letter the larger world outside of the frame sits in her room and settles on her mind as well.