Description
La belle Angèle – the sitter sealed inside a circle
The middle of the canvas is taken by a large circle bordered with a dark line. Inside it sits a young woman in a white Breton lace cap and a broad white collar; her dress is dark, with a belt and an embroidered bodice, her hands folded in her lap. Everything else stands outside the circle. The ground is blue-grey and strewn with pink and red flowers and leaves. On the left, close against the circle, stands a golden-yellow vessel modelled as a human figure with one arm raised. At the lower left the words La belle Angèle are painted onto the canvas, and beside them the signature with the year. The work is held by the Musee d’Orsay in Paris under the inventory number RF 2617.
The circle that separates her from her own ground
Portrait and ground are not in the same picture. The woman is painted inside the circle, as in a medallion, while the ground runs around it and continues behind, with its flowers and leaves. Nothing joins her to it: the circle outlines her and cuts her out. That is why the scene looks like two sheets pasted together, a portrait and a decorative surface, and it is this unusual division that makes the picture memorable.
The name painted in the picture, and what the museum says about it
The words La belle Angèle are not a label added by the museum. The museum record lists among the inscriptions a signature, a date, and an inscription giving the identity of the model, original and on the front. That is exactly what can be seen on the canvas: the name is painted at the lower left, inside the picture and outside the circle. Record and canvas therefore agree.
The vessel in the shape of a figure
To the left of the circle stands an object that is no part of the portrait: a golden-yellow vessel modelled as a crouching human figure with one arm raised. The museum record notes for this work that the same vessel appears on another of the painter’s canvases. We report that as the museum’s statement; we have not checked it ourselves on the other work.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the circle is the hardest part: it has to be even and quiet, or the medallion breaks up and the portrait merges into the decorated ground. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a woman in a Breton cap inside a painted circle, a vessel shaped as a figure beside it.
- Technique: oil on canvas, a blue-grey flowered ground and a dark dress.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 40 x 50 cm to 160 x 200 cm; 72 x 90 cm and 87 x 110 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the sitter’s name is painted into the picture itself, outside the circle.
If the same period interests you, see also The Green Christ, Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven and Breton Peasant Women. The museum record gives the measurement as height by width: 92 x 73 cm.
