Description
Portrait of Natasha Gelman is a small 1943 painting in which Frida Kahlo depicts the art collector Natasha Gelman: a woman with light-brown hair set in round curls, a sparkling earring and a thick fur around her shoulders, against a dark green ground. The original, oil on canvas, is 30 cm high and 23 cm wide and belongs to the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Our painter recreates it by hand in oil on canvas in a single size, 40 x 50 cm, and you receive a photograph of the finished portrait before it ships.
| Title: | Portrait of Natasha Gelman |
| Other titles: | Retrato de Natasha Gelman · Porträt von Natasha Gelman |
| Painter: | Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) |
| Year painted: | 1943 |
| Original size: | 30 cm x 23 cm (height x width) |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | Mexican modernism |
| Located at: | Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, Mexico City |
| Our reproduction: | Hand-painted oil on canvas, 1 sizes or made to measure |
Portrait of Natasha Gelman – Frida Kahlo
What does Portrait of Natasha Gelman show?
Natasha Gelman is painted from the shoulders up and fully frontal, her face filling the centre of the canvas. She looks at us calmly, a little reserved, her closed lips a warm red.
Her thin brows rise in two clean arches, her eyes are grey-green, and her pale skin is touched with pink on the cheeks.
The hair is light brown with a golden sheen, carefully set in round curls: above the forehead it rises in a tall row of rolls, and at the sides it falls in soft coils to the shoulders. On the right of the painting, just below the curls, a large earring made of tiny pale stones catches the light.
A thick brown fur wraps her shoulders, its two ends meeting at the bottom, with a dark garment and a V-shaped neckline showing between them. The background is an even dark green, slightly lighter around the head, so the pale hair and face stand out sharply against it.
Who was Natasha Gelman?
Natasha Gelman was an art collector. Her name is carried by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, which, according to the list of Kahlo’s works on the English Wikipedia, owns this portrait.
In 1943 Kahlo took a teaching post at the newly reformed La Esmeralda painting school in Mexico City, and that same year her work was shown in Philadelphia and at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in New York. When and why she painted Natasha Gelman, our sources do not say.
Why do Kahlo’s admirers seek out this portrait?
Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits, yet the English Wikipedia describes her in its very first sentence as a painter of many portraits. This painting shows exactly that side of her work: the face before us is not the artist’s own but that of a collector whose name is now tied to her paintings.
In her self-portraits Kahlo usually paints her own face as still as a mask and surrounds it with signs from which the viewer reads a deeper meaning. Here those signs are absent: only the face, the fur, the earring and the quiet green ground remain, which gives the portrait a restrained, almost private air.
Many people know the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection from the touring exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism, hosted between 2019 and 2022 by seven museums in the United States and Canada. Whether this portrait travelled with it, the Frida Kahlo article on the English Wikipedia does not say; it is about the painter, and there is no separate article on this painting.
Where is the original kept?
According to the English Wikipedia’s list, the original belongs to the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, based in Mexico City. It is small: 30 cm high and 23 cm wide, barely larger than a sheet of A4 paper.
Kahlo painted it in oil on canvas, the same support our painter uses. How the painting entered the collection and where it can be seen today, our sources do not describe, so we make no claim about it.
Your hand-painted copy is therefore close to the original in its materials too: oil colours on canvas that we can stretch on a stretcher bar or frame.
Portrait of Natasha Gelman or another work from the same collection?
From the same year, 1943, comes Diego in My Thoughts, also in the Gelman collection; Wikipedia’s list gives it the alternative title Self-Portrait as a Tehuana.
The same collection holds Self-Portrait with Braid of 1941 and Self-Portrait with Necklace of 1933; beside this portrait they make a well-matched pair or trio on one wall.
If you would like to hang it next to a portrait of Kahlo’s husband, look at Portrait of Diego Rivera of 1937, which Wikipedia also places in the Gelman collection.
Our whole range of famous Frida Kahlo paintings, from still lifes to double portraits, opens on the Frida Kahlo page.
How does our painter render the curls, the fur and the earring?
Because the original is painted on canvas, our painter works on the same support as Kahlo, only far larger. First the canvas is smoothed with thin layers of primer, so that the face gets the same even, polished surface as the original.
The dark green background goes down first in several thin layers, lightened a little around the head. Then the face is built up: pale skin with pink cheeks, grey-green eyes and red lips, with soft transitions and no hard edges.
The curls are shaped one by one, darker brown in the shadows and pale, almost golden strokes on the rounded edges, to give the hair volume. The fur grows from short, dense strokes in browns and olive tones, the earring from tiny white and grey dots that catch the light.
The result is a Frida Kahlo reproduction with real layers of oil paint; each one is made separately, just for you.
Which wall suits this size?
In short: we offer this portrait in one size only, 40 x 50 cm, which suits a bedroom, a hallway, a work corner or a narrower stretch of living-room wall.
The size is given as width x height. The original measures about 23 x 30 cm (width x height; written height x width, 30 x 23 cm), so our painting is 17 cm wider and 20 cm taller. The only size we offer is therefore larger than the original.
The original’s sides are in a ratio of roughly 3 : 4, ours of 4 : 5, so the painting is a touch wider in proportion; with the face set in the middle, the difference is hardly noticeable.
As a painting for the living room it works best at eye level on a narrow wall between two windows, above a chest of drawers or grouped with other small portraits.
Can I get another size or a frame?
If Natasha’s portrait needs other dimensions, send us the width and height you want; we check whether it can be done and come back with a price and a production time.
The portrait reaches you rolled, stretched on a wooden stretcher bar or ready framed. Our workshop in Slovenia does the stretching and framing for Natasha Gelman’s portrait, as it does for every canvas painting we sell.
The frame around Natasha Gelman is picked in our 3D app, which does nothing but frame choice; a view of the painting on a photo of your own wall is a separate service.
How soon will the painting reach you?
Once you confirm the order, the painter finishes the portrait in 15 to 45 working days. Before packing, we send you a photograph of the finished work, and if you would like a change, we make it before dispatch.
When the portrait of Natasha Gelman travels within Slovenia or to another country of the European Union, no customs apply, and our returns policy covers every order.
For someone who loves portraits, Mexican art or the stories behind art collections, it is a personal gift; if you are not sure they would pick this very work, give a wall art voucher instead.
Frequently asked questions
Where can the original of this portrait be found?
In the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, which Wikipedia’s list of Kahlo’s works places in Mexico City.
Who is the woman in the painting?
Natasha Gelman, an art collector who, together with Jacques Gelman, gave her name to the collection that owns this portrait.
Will I get a print or an oil painting reproduction?
Real oil: every copy is painted with a brush on canvas, with no printing involved.
How big is the 1943 original?
It is 30 cm high and 23 cm wide, so smaller than our 40 x 50 cm size.
Can I order it in a different size?
Yes, send us the measurements you want and we will confirm, before you order, whether it can be painted and what it costs.
How long until the portrait arrives?
Painting takes 15 to 45 working days; then we ship the portrait, without customs formalities inside the EU.
Is it right for a bedroom or as a gift?
Yes. At 40 x 50 cm it looks good above a bedside table or a dressing table, and as a gift it pleases anyone who likes Kahlo’s art.
Is this a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo?
No. Here Kahlo painted not herself but another person, the collector Natasha Gelman.
- Subject: Natasha Gelman from the shoulders up, with light-brown curls, a sparkling earring and fur around her shoulders against a dark green ground.
- Original: 1943, oil on canvas, 30 x 23 cm, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, Mexico City.
- Ours: hand-painted in oil on canvas to your order, in one size: 40 x 50 cm.
- Worth knowing: Our size is larger than the original, by 17 cm in width and 20 cm in height.
