Orsay acquires a pastel by Mela Muter

17/10/24 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée d’Orsay - She was recently one of the artists of the Paris of the Roaring Twenties honoured by the Musée du Luxembourg in its exhibition Pionnières, and the Jewish artists of the École de Paris presented by the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme (see article). Marie-Melania Klingsland, known as Mela Muter, has now entered the collections of the Musée d’Orsay. Until now, the only link with this Polish artist, who became a naturalised French citizen in 1927, was a portrait by the painter René-Xavier Prinet. It now includes one of her pastels donated by the Cercle de femmes mécènes de la Société des Amis des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie. Thanks to the support of Mr Marek Roefler, it was purchased from the Agnews gallery in Brussels, which presented it at the last Tefaf.

Mela Muter (1876-1967)
An Old Breton Woman, 1907
Pastel - 31 x 47.5 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: RMN-GP/S. Crépy

See the image in its page

Now largely forgotten, like Olga Boznanska, several of whose works are also in the Musée d’Orsay’s reserves, Mela Muter was a leading figure at the Paris Salon in the first half of the 20th century, where she exhibited from 1902. She is fairly well represented in French public collections, notably the Musée d’art moderne in Paris and the Centre Pompidou. In addition to the thematic exhibitions devoted to the Parisian art scene at the beginning of the 20th century, she featured in the exhibition that the Musée de Quimper dedicated in 2004 to the Polish artistic colony established in Brittany between 1890 and 1939 (see article). Before that, a decade earlier, it had been the subject of a strictly monographic exhibition presented by the Musée de Pont-Aven. The catalogue published for the occasion remains to this day the main bibliographical reference in French on her subject. As part of Nova Polska, the Polish season in France in 2004, the Musée d’Orsay honoured the Polish symbolist painter Józef…