Henri Rousseau – Woman with Basket of Eggs

Woman with Basket of Eggs – a hand-painted reproduction

An upright half-length portrait. A woman faces the viewer, turned very slightly. She wears
a wide-brimmed pale straw hat with a pink band round the crown; long brown hair falls in waves
on both sides of her face, and a blue ribbon is tied at her throat. She is dressed in a dark
green bodice with a broad cream collar over a pale pink blouse with short puffed sleeves, and
a dusty rose skirt shows at the lower left. On her far arm she carries a large woven wicker
basket with a tall arched handle, heaped to the rim with pale cream oval eggs; one hand rests
on the rim among them and the other grips the top of the handle. Behind her, filling the left
and the top, stands dense dark green foliage with pale trunks and branches showing through. At
the right the foliage opens onto a pale sky and a distant view: flat green ground, a cluster
of pale buildings with terracotta roofs, and among them one slender upright shape. At the
lower right, on the green, is a pale worn signature.

A portrait that looks back

The painter sets the face high and draws it without flattery: the brows, the lines at the
mouth and a level, measured look straight at the viewer. That directness is what separates
this canvas from the group scenes on this shelf. A comparably placed woman set against a
landscape appears in Portrait of a Woman in a Landscape, where the background is open instead of closed off by foliage.

Who she is, and what she carries

Who is portrayed we do not claim. The record gives a title and nothing else; we know no
name, no occupation and no relation to the painter, and a basket of eggs is not evidence of a
trade. Nor do we date the work: the record gives a decade, not a year, so this page carries no
year at all. The painting says only what can be seen – an upright bearing, a carefully painted
straw hat, and a full basket. Where the same painter set down several people at once, see
The Family and The Wedding Party.

What it means on the wall

The original measures 35.2 cm x 27 cm and is small and upright. Because the subject is
half-length it carries moderate sizes without loss: the face, the ribbon and the basket handle
stay distinct, while larger sizes bring out the weave of the basket and the separate eggs. 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 people in it, 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 – the source here is the largest in
this group – layer by layer, so that the weave of the basket, the blue ribbon and the distant
cluster of roofs 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.