The Clairvoyant
1917. Oil on canvas. Room BSince Gustave Courbet, realist painters had been interested in the representation of clairvoyants and mediums, associated by art with feminine practices. Set inside a dark room, Benlliure’s work is a markedly tellurist image offering a visual connection between the supposed paranormal gifts of the protagonist and the world of the irrational, which in the early twentieth century was linked essentially to women.
G.Navarro, Carlos, Invitadas. Fragmentos sobre mujeres, ideología y artes plásticas en España (1833-1931), Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2020, p.147 nº 13