Henri Rousseau – Portrait of the Second Wife of the Artist

Portrait of the Second Wife of the Artist is a work by the painter Henri Rousseau, oil on canvas; the work is not securely dated. The original measures 23 cm x 19 cm and is in the collection of Musée Picasso, Paris, France (inv. RF 1973-89). The picture shows: an elderly woman with dark hair and a striped dress before a pale curtain, a lit gilt oil lamp at the left.

Portrait of the Second Wife of the Artist – a hand-painted reproduction

The background is a pale grey-white curtain falling in soft vertical folds. At the left,
on a pale blue-white base, stands a lit oil lamp: an ornately worked gilt body, a pierced
crown-like collar above it, and a small pale flame at the top with a faint glow around it. The
right two thirds are filled by the head and shoulders of an elderly woman, turned very
slightly, her eyes on the viewer. Her dark hair is parted in the centre and drawn tightly back
over the ears into a knot behind. The face is strongly lined: heavy-lidded dark eyes, dark
brows, deep folds running from the nose to the corners of the mouth, a firm closed mouth,
ruddy cheeks and a strong chin with a dimple in it. A small gold drop earring hangs at the
visible ear. She wears a dark reddish-brown dress finely striped, the stripes running
diagonally across the bodice and shoulders, with a high collar; at the throat is a rectangular
pale brooch set with two rows of pale stones.

The lamp and the face

The picture holds only two things: a face and a lit lamp. Everything else is curtain. The
flame does not light the room dramatically – the painting stays evenly lit throughout – but
stands beside the face as a second presence. It is that plainness that makes the canvas feel
more like a record than a scene. A comparably severe head with no setting around it appears in
Portrait of the Father of the Artist.

What the title says, and what it does not

The record’s title describes a relationship rather than a person: it speaks of the artist’s
second wife and gives no name. We repeat that and stop – we add no name, no dates and no
biography. The work is not dated either: the record gives a decade rather than a year, so this
page carries no year. The other family portraits by the same hand in this group are The Child with the Doll and
Portrait of a Woman.

What it means on the wall

The original measures 23 cm x 19 cm and is one of the smallest canvases in this group –
about the size of a postcard. That is exactly why the choice of size matters so much here: at
the original measurement this is a private, almost secret image, while at half a metre it
becomes a portrait that can carry a wall. Because the subject is quiet and dark in itself, it
also works well paired with another canvas of the same size. We do not reproduce canvases at
the original measurement; you choose the size for your wall. For the opposite case, a wide
bright scene, 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 diagonal
stripes on the dress, the stones in the brooch and the ornament on the lamp 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.