Chaim Soutine is an expressionist artist that lived and worked in Paris at the height of the modern era.

Despite dominant trends toward abstraction, Soutine maintained a firm connection to the recognizable subject matter. His innovation was in the way he chose to represent his subjects: with a thick impasto of paint covering the surface of the canvas, the palette, visible brushwork, and forms translated the artist’s inner torment.

There is a lot of symbolism in most of Soutine’s work. For example, here, in Still Life with Herrings, he made the forks look like arms reaching for the skinny fish to represent hunger. Soutine suffered great poverty while growing up and constant stomach ulcers that often made eating impossible.

In this painting, he confronts his figure head-on, with little distinction between the woman and the water itself. Her dress, skin, and posture are all static while not entirely motionless – much like the water she is entering. Soutine’s brushwork drastically flattens the figure and her surroundings, removing the feeling of natural depth.

Chaim Soutine was not a fan of the outdoors, so he rendered his landscapes with his own brand of anxiety and gloominess, indicated by scenery that seems to shift across the canvas.

Sources

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-soutine-chaim.htm

(1) Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters & Bellboys – a tour with Fred Sirieix – YouTube