Provenance

Mrs. Stephen Lyne-Stephens

Duvernay, Pauline

French, 1812 - 1894

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Shown from the knees up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a short wine-red jacket over an ivory-white gown, gazes out at us from this vertical portrait painting. She sits in a chair surrounded by emerald-green cushions, which are covered with a light green floral pattern. The woman’s shoulders are squared toward us as her knees angle slightly to our right. The skirt of her gown is patterned with coin-sized gold dots against the white background, and the scooped neckline of her bodice is trimmed with gold ribbon. The top of at least four buttons on her velvet jacket are buttoned under her bust, and a cinnamon-brown belt with an iron-gray buckle, perhaps a cameo, cinches her waist. Her long, ash-brown hair is loosely pulled up with curls faming her face and falling to her shoulders. One braided plait is interwoven through a loose white turban, the ends of which drape over her shoulders. She has gray eyes under thin brows, a rose-red bow mouth, and her cheeks are tinged with pink. Gleaming, laurel-green drop earrings dangle from her ears. Her right arm, to our left, rests on an oversized green cushion, which balances on the carved, gold arm of her chair. Soft light from the upper left glints on the gold ribbons of the turban and cushion, and on her earrings and jacket buttons. The wall behind her is mottled with smoke gray and moss green. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the upper right, “Mde Le Brun 1789.”
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Madame d'Aguesseau de Fresnes, 1789, oil on wood, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1946.7.16

Madame d'Aguesseau de Fresnes

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun · 1789 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1946.7.16

A group of pale-skinned men, women, and children along with a few horses and dogs form a loose line across a dirt road, which is flanked with rows of buildings on both sides that converge in the tree-filled distance in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted mostly with sage and moss green, peanut and caramel brown, cream white, and black. Most of the people wear hats or caps. The women wear long dresses and the men wear jackets and pants. One man wearing a black jacket with buttons down the front, and with white at the neck and cuffs, leans down from atop a black horse at the center of the group. Another man with a tall, cream-white, brimmed hat and white collar stands behind a dappled horse to our right of center. Men, women, and children, most wearing tattered and worn clothing, look on. One woman to our left holds a baby strapped to her back and others gather around the horses. A pair of men in front of a stone building to our right smoke long, white, tobacco pipes. Others peer out of the open door and windows. An illegible wooden sign hangs above the door. Leafy vines grow over parts of the building façade. To our left, a woman sits on the ground and holds a spindle as she winds wool with a spinning frame. A man leans down over her shoulder, and a child looks away from us, into a fenced enclosure in front of a building. People, horses, dogs, and chickens are scattered along the road into the distance, and a church steeple rises against the ivory-white clouds in the sky beyond. A partial inscription with the artist’s name and date appears in black paint in the lower right corner: “Isack van Os 164.”
Isack van Ostade, The Halt at the Inn, 1645, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.49

The Halt at the Inn

Isack van Ostade · 1645 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.49