George Grey Barnard, born Bellefonte, - Le Lys Casse (The Broken Lily) - ca. 1898-1910 - T-Shirt

A nude female figure rises through a looping, veil-like form in this graphite pencil study, her upward reach trailing into drooping drapery that reads as a flower on the edge of falling.

Visual Elements & Composition

Soft grey pencil lines dominate the sheet, set against pale green-cream paper with a few faint ochre stains near the figure's hips. The figure's head turns toward the viewer, with short curled hair and a shaded form behind it. One arm lifts to the right while the other reaches down and to the left. A large oval outline wraps around her body, and below her the drapery narrows into several tapering trails that run toward the bottom edge. The image contains no lettering beyond the title's sense of the work itself.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title, Le Lys Cassé, means The Broken Lily. The rising figure and the trailing lines of her drapery present a snapped stem and petals beginning to fall, so the body becomes an emblem of fragility and beauty in decline. This is a theme common in the symbolist art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where the figure carries emotional and allegorical meaning rather than narrative detail. George Grey Barnard, the American sculptor and draughtsman born in Bellefonte, is best known for monumental figurative sculpture, and this study shares his interest in the idealised human form and sinuous line.

Cut for the Shape of the Wearer

A tee gives this drawing a body to move across. The tall oval of the figure and her sweeping trails follow the shoulders, chest and torso, so the design shifts with each turn and reads differently from every angle. The soft, dissolving outlines suit a garment worn close and in motion, where the figure seems to rise and fall with the wearer's own movement.