Description
| Title: | Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape |
| Other titles: | Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape; Portrait de femme dans un paysage (the museum’s titles) |
| Painter: | Henri Rousseau |
| Year painted: | 1899 |
| Original size: | 100.5 cm x 81.5 cm (height x width) |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | naive art (primitivism) |
| Held at: | Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA (inv. BF260) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a size made to order |
Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape is a painting by Henri Rousseau, oil on canvas, 1899, held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia under inventory number BF260. The original is 100.5 cm high and 81.5 cm wide. What you see: a woman in a long red dress seated in profile on a chair before a dense hedge, with a church spire and its cross rising behind the trees at the left.
Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape
What is on the canvas?
The canvas is upright, a little taller than it is wide. The woman sits in profile facing right, on a dark bentwood chair whose curved back shows behind her. She wears a long red dress with long sleeves, the skirt falling to the ground; her fair hair is pinned up in a knot on the crown, and in her lap she holds something white. Behind and beside her a dense hedge of thin stems with small leaves runs the full width of the picture, so that she is enclosed by twigs to the waist. At the left a dark church spire with a cross at its tip rises above the trees, with two smaller pointed turrets beside it and a slender pointed tree of almost the same height; red roofs show between the trees. At the right grow dark conifers and a paler tree with drooping branches. The sky is a pale blue-grey and empty. In the foreground is grass with separate clumps of fern and white, red and yellow flowers. The signature, Henri Rousseau, is at the lower left, with the year 1899 beneath it.
Who is the woman in the portrait?
The museum’s record does not name her, and neither do we. Nor do we guess what she holds in her lap: the white shape could be a folded cloth, a fan or a sheet of paper, and the record says nothing about it. What is certain is what is painted: the woman is placed out of doors, before plants and a church spire, not in a room. Another single figure out of doors is The Child with the Doll, and a portrait of a woman in black on a balcony is Portrait of a Woman.
What is a portrait-landscape?
Writing about another Rousseau painting from the same year, the Barnes Foundation says that the painter often posed his sitters outdoors, surrounded by plants and flowers both real and imagined, and that he coined the term portrait-landscape for pictures of this kind. That painting is The Past and the Present, the wedding portrait of the painter and his wife. The two museum records give both paintings a place in the same room of the permanent collection, on opposite walls. On this canvas it means that the hedge is not a backdrop: it stands in the same plane as the woman and encloses her to the waist.
How large is the original, and what does that mean on a wall?
The original is 100.5 cm high and 81.5 cm wide. Eight sizes are available: 56 x 70, 68 x 85, 80 x 100, 90 x 110, 100 x 120, 129 x 160, 145 x 180 and 160 x 200 cm. The 80 x 100 cm size is nearest the original, within a centimetre or two in each direction. At that size the woman appears at about a quarter of life size and the spire stays a clear vertical in the upper half; the smaller sizes suit the space above a chest of drawers, the larger ones fill a wall. Custom sizes are ordered through the made-to-order painting page. A group set out of doors in front of a house is The Family.
How is a hand-painted reproduction made?
We paint your canvas painting by hand in oils after you order it, at the size you choose. From a high-resolution image of the original, the painter lays in the sky, the spire and the trees first, then the red dress, and last the hedge, one stem at a time, because otherwise the band of twigs would merge into a single flat green. A hand-painted canvas always differs slightly from the next, and that difference is exactly what a print cannot give you. It is stretched on a wooden frame, ready to hang. The whole collection is in the Henri Rousseau gallery.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original kept?
At the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, inventory number BF260.
When was it painted?
In 1899, the date the museum gives; the year is also written beneath the signature at the lower left.
Has it been exhibited recently?
Yes. The museum lists it in the exhibition Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets, at the Barnes Foundation from 19 October 2025 to 22 February 2026 and at the Musée de l’Orangerie from 24 March to 20 July 2026.
Is this a print?
No. It is painted by hand in oils, and the layers of paint can be seen and felt.
Is the painting suitable as a gift?
Yes, especially for someone who loves gardens and quiet portraits: the scene is calm and full of colour. If you would rather the recipient chose, there is a gift voucher.
- Subject: a woman in a red dress seated in profile before a hedge, a church spire with a cross at the left, red and white flowers in the grass.
- Original: oil on canvas, 100.5 x 81.5 cm (height x width), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, inv. BF260; 1899.
- Our version: hand-painted oil, eight sizes from 56 x 70 to 160 x 200 cm, or a size made to order.
- Of note: the museum’s records place this painting and the wedding portrait The Past and the Present in the same room, on opposite walls.
