Henri Rousseau – Portrait of a Woman

Portrait of a Woman is a work by the painter Henri Rousseau, oil on canvas; the work is not securely dated. The original measures 160 cm x 105 cm and is in the collection of Musée Picasso, Paris, France (inv. RF1973-90). The picture shows: a woman in a long black dress with a pale blue collar stands on a balcony, a patterned drapery at the left and a tall pink-flowered stem at the right.

Portrait of a Woman – a hand-painted reproduction

An upright full-length portrait. A woman stands facing the viewer in a long black dress
with a high collar, a broad rounded pale blue collar over the shoulders, long fitted sleeves
with small white cuffs, and a pale blue sash at the waist; the black skirt reaches the floor
and one grey shoe shows beneath it. Her dark hair is drawn back and her pale face looks
straight out. One hand holds a small green sprig with a tiny red and white flower. The other
rests on top of a tall upright green stem standing on the floor beside her; near her hand it
carries pink daisy-like flowers, and at the bottom it splays into branching stems with narrow
leaves. A ring shows on one finger. At the left hangs a large patterned drapery – vertical
bands of red-orange, white flecked with dark dashes, and a red lattice – ending in a
multicoloured fringe. Behind her runs a balcony railing of dark vertical bars, and beyond it a
grey clouded sky and a distant range of pale grey heights. A small dark bird flies in the sky
at the upper right, wings swept back. Potted plants with yellow pansy-like flowers stand on
the balcony. The floor is pale stone marked with a faint diamond pattern.

A black field and three blue accents

The dress is an almost uniform black field taking the centre of the canvas; the painter
does not shade it. It is broken only by three pale blue accents – collar, sash and cuffs – and
by the pale skin. That is what makes the figure look calm and firm at once. The same handling,
where a dark dress carries the composition, appears in Portrait of Madame M., the only portrait in this group
that is larger still.

A balcony instead of a room

The sitter is not placed in a drawing room but on a balcony: beyond the railing the sky and
a distant range open out, and among the potted plants a tall stem grows almost up to her hand.
We do not name the place and we do not name the heights – the record says nothing about them.
Nor do we know the sitter: the title is generic and the record adds neither a name nor an age.
The work is not dated either; the record carries no year of any kind, so this page shows none.
The other two portraits of women in this group are Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape and Woman with Basket of Eggs.

What it means on the wall

The original measures 160 cm x 105 cm and is markedly upright. Because it is a standing
figure at close to life size, it works best on a tall wall and at eye level; at small sizes
the bird, the ring and the pattern of the drapery collapse into dots, while at tall sizes the
sense of an encounter returns. We do not reproduce canvases at the original measurement; you
choose the size for your wall. For the opposite case, a wide scene with no figure, see
View of the Bridge at Sèvres.

How a hand-painted reproduction is made

Every canvas is painted by hand in oils, to order, in the size you choose. The painter
works from a high-resolution photograph of the original, layer by layer, so that the pattern
of the drapery, the pink flowers on the stem and the small bird in the sky stay legible at
smaller sizes too. Because this is hand work, two canvases of the same size always differ
slightly; that is not a fault but the difference between a painting and a print. Prices on
this page start at 155 EUR for the smallest size.