Balthus, Thérèse Dreaming

 

Balthus, Thérèse Dreaming, oil on canvas, 1938, The Met Museum, New York 

In this controversial painting, a young girl in a light-coloured dress leans back on a chair with her eyes closed, one leg raised, arms resting behind her head, while a cat drinks milk under her feat. Balthus’s Thérèse Dreaming is painted with the stillness of a dream and the intimacy of intrusion. For decades, it hung quietly, admired for its composition. Then, in 2017, a petition called for its removal from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, arguing that the pose sexualises a minor, as the model’s underwear is clearly visible beneath her raised leg. The petition attracted thousands of signatures, with supporters claiming that by displaying this painting, The Met romanticised “voyeurism and the objectification of children.” 

The museum refused to remove the painting, stating that art has the power to spark important conversations about past cultural values and shifting standards of acceptability. The controversy reignited the ever-present and long-standing tension between art, desire, and ethics. The artist, Balthasar Klossowski, known as Balthus, is notorious for his erotically charged paintings depicting adolescent girls, but always claimed that his work was about reverie rather than eroticism. His attitude echoed that of many modernist artists who idealised childhood as a state of freedom and vulnerability, unshaped by the strictures of adult society.

The young model, Thérèse Blanchard, appears lost in thought, her eyes closed, completely unaware of the viewer. She is dreaming, unaware that she is being looked at. Yet in art, there is no such thing as being unobserved: the very act of painting, and of looking, transforms the subject into spectacle. The viewer’s gaze, whether critical or complicit, becomes part of the work’s meaning.

What makes Thérèse Dreaming so unsettling is its refusal to resolve. The image exists in a state of suspension: tender yet voyeuristic, beautiful yet morally fraught. It reveals the limits of aesthetic admiration, how easily beauty slides into power. The painting forces us to confront the dynamics of the gaze, who controls it, who it objectifies, and what responsibilities come with it.

To look at Thérèse Dreaming now is to confront that discomfort directly. It does not ask us to approve or reject, as art cannot speak to us directly, only to acknowledge that art’s history is inseparable from its transgressions. The painting’s stillness conceals a restless question: what do we permit ourselves to see?

So this week, I ask you to consider whether you would display or conceal this socially disruptive artwork?