On a bench, a woman muses with her books open and exchanges a glance with a man behind in the shadows. In the distance, the silhouette of the Marigny Theatre in the gardens of the Champs-Elysées roundabout in Paris.

The woman, slightly to the left of the centre of the composition, is in full light, against the dark green background of the foliage and her shawl of the same colour. She is beautifully dressed in bright colours, in a striped blouse and skirt and red boots. The female body is turned towards the man, whose face and right hand are the only ones visible. The man is treated in the periphery with cold colours, as if he did not exist. Like the woman in full light facing the man placed in the shade, the Marigny theatre is bathed in sunlight behind the dark green foliage.

The canvas is punctuated by the interplay of glances and hands and by the dynamic crossing of the diagonals of the female body and the bench. To the linearity of the latter giving depth to the composition, the supple lines of the skirt recuperate the gaze towards the sleeve and towards the back of her left hand, strangely laid flat on the right arm, thus ending the lozenge of the feminine bust, like a mirror to the beautiful feminine face placed at the centre of all the gazes. The alternation of warm and cold tones is supported by touches of yellow paint that the artist has distributed throughout the painting.

Is it a painting of the strength of a budding romance or of a loving memory? A painting of literary or artistic inspiration?

This painting was exhibited at the “Rencontres avec Victor Hugo” in Montfermeil in 1985, with the following lines by the poet from “La pente de la rêverie” in the catalogue :

« The horizon was lost, the forms disappeared

And the man with the thing and the being with the spirit

Floated with my breath, and the shiver took me. »