Emilie Charmy was an atypical artist. She left behind her Catholic upbringing, rejected a conventional teaching career in order to become an artist, and had art shown alongside her male contemporaries like Modigliani and Matisse at the Salon des Indépendants in 1904.

Her work is characterized with strong brushstrokes, as well as her use of abstraction and nonlocal color. She was a member of the Fauvist movement. Historian, Gill Perry, described her as, “(Charmy) sees like a woman and paints like a man; from the one she takes grace and from the other strength, and this is what makes her such a strange and powerful painter who holds our attention." Charmy was an artist preoccupied with female sexuality. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, who favored pastoral scenes of women and children, Charmy was known for her portraiture and scenes of pleasure, subjects much more popular with male artists at the time. Over time her  paintings grew to be more explicit. By 1902, she was living in Paris and painting brothels and prostitutes. Emilie Charmy’s early Nu Aux Escarpins Verts (or Nude with Green Slippers) from 1900 reflects her budding interest in the female form, but is not very explicit.  Nu Aux Escarpins Verts depicts an -almost- glowing reclining nude woman, enveloped in a warm rosy golden background. The figure is slightly abstracted. The painting evokes a superbly cozy and blissful feeling. She peacefully rests, snuggled in the warmth around her. The background of Nu Aux Escarpins Verts somewhat resembles a womb-chamber. It seems to envelope the figure, and the almost fleshiness of the fabric around is evocative of that imagery. Her expression is slightly coy, and very relaxed. It feels like the moment after something quick and passionate occurred, so passionate in fact she still has her shoes on. Charmy was known to reference history painting in her work, so it’s no surprise Nu Aux Escarpins Verts evokes the odalisque. The model of Nu Aux Escarpins Verts is unknown, and the work is currently privately owned.  

According to the artist herself, "painting was an obsession which dominated many other aspects of her life". There was a lot of speculation, regarding her motivation for painting works like Nu Aux Escarpins Verts, and a psychoanalytic approach lends itself well to unpacking this work. According to Freud, an artist makes art in an attempt to resolve developmental conflicts or as a means of obtaining pleasure. Freud would theorize that Charmy’s fixation on the female nude relates to her supposed attraction to women and her disinterest in traditionally feminine roles. 

Despite her marriage to George Bouche, Charmy was incredibly close with the writer Colette, and a sexual relationship between the two women has been suggested. They showed work together, Colette often modeled nude for Charmy, and wrote the forward in a book about Charmy’s paintings. Charmy was even called “the Colette of painting” by critic Henri Berand, who believed their artistic techniques mirrored each other. Of course, history remembers them as “just good friends”.  

Charmy certainly wasn’t publicly known as a bisexual or lesbian, however her son Edmond later suggested she was a bisexual. Her attraction to women seems to have been hidden from the public eye, especially since she achieved great fame during her lifetime. Although nearly forgotten by mainstream Art History, Charmy was a public figure and was awarded Chevalier of the Legion of Honor award.

Not all of the nudes Charmy painted were shown in shows or sold. There was a chunk of her work that was kept as part of her private collection, shown to just friends and lovers. These private works included many of Charmy’s nude self portraits and images of Colette. It’s unclear if Nu Aux Escarpins Verts was a part of this collection or not. Perhaps Charmy’s private nudes were expressions of her private sexuality, something she intentionally hid from the outside world. Lesbianism was certainly taboo at the time, and it’s not unreasonable to understand her work as pretty overtly queer coded. 

Charmy and Bouche’s single son, Edmond, was essentially raised by nannies and nursemaids. Charmy took little interest in motherhood, and in a biography, Edmond writes, "while some mothers glory in their offspring, Charmy hid hers jealously. This newly born knew neither the disorder of the studio nor the smell of paint.” It certainly seems like Charmy’s ego was involved in her detached mothering technique, that her child would get in the way of her work as a painter. Understanding her relationship to motherhood, her urge to be free of her child, certainly is reflected in her work. It explains why she rarely painted images typical of female artists at the time. Why she avoided mother-child subjects, favored by women like Mary Cassatt. She was certainly not interested in motherhood as a subject or as a practice. Although her behavior doesn’t fit either of Freud’s famous child-parent dynamics, her choice to avoid motherhood as a subject speaks to her discomfort with being a mother. 

Digging deeper, Charmy was orphaned during her childhood, when both of her parents died. She grew up without a mother, living with relatives in Lyon, who ignored her artistic pursuits and tried to force her to become a teacher. This was entirely out of her control, and subconsciously affected many parts of her life. There was no maternal comfort for her, so it’s easy to understand that she didn’t know how to provide that for her own son. If we were really to subscribe to Freud’s psychology, he likely would have theorized that the lack of a mother figure led to Charmy seeking it from other places, in warped ways, presenting as a sexual interest in women. 

The background of Nu Aux Escarpins Verts is particularly interesting, with it’s plushness, warm palette, and soft brushstrokes. The fleshiness of the environment the woman lays is is evocative of a womb chamber, a Freudian reading in its own. From a psychoanalytic perspective, with the context, this potential womb chamber is certainly less about motherhood and more about female sexuality and lesbianism. Perhaps it’s a depiction of a woman blissfully enveloped in the warmth of another woman. There’s a psychoanalytic theory that suggests sex is an attempt to re-enter the womb, to go back to the perfect primordial place, where one was safe, and protected. Usually this theory is applied to men, however, it certainly could be applied to lesbian or bisexual women as well. 

Charmy was fascinated and preoccupied with female sexuality. This is apparent in all aspects of her life, from her relationship to her family to her artmaking choices to her “friendships. She was sexual and sensual and feminist, redefining what feminine art meant at the turn of the century. She supported herself fully off of her art, and carved out a niche for herself, competing directly with popular male artists at the time, subverting tropes and shaking up the art world. Her own upbringing affected both her art and her family dynamic throughout her life. She should be remembered for her revolutionary take on female sexuality, her departure from the male gaze, and her role as one of the few female Fauvist painters.