Description
Mette Gauguin – the museum’s title is her name alone
The woman sits the wrong way round on a chair, her arms folded over the back, looking to the side so that we see her profile. She wears a pale evening dress with bare shoulders and a gathered edge, long gloves to the elbow, and a narrow black band at the throat with a pendant. Her hair is pinned up. The wall behind her is grey-green, dark furniture stands to the right, and a curtain hangs at the edge. At the lower left a red-orange fabric appears. The work is held by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo under number NG.M.00771; it was made in 1884.
The dress is in the English title only
The museum lists the work under the title Mette Gauguin – simply under her name. The title Mette Gauguin in Evening Dress, which the English-speaking world knows and under which the picture is most often searched for, appears in the record as a second, English title. The museum also enters her in a field of its own for the depicted person. The catalogue therefore does not describe a lady in evening dress but a particular person with a first name and a surname; the dress enters the title only with the translation.
A hundred years in exhibitions
The record also lists a series of exhibitions in which the work has been shown. The oldest is Oslo in 1914, followed by Switzerland in 1928, the Paris centenary of 1949, Oslo in 1955, Stockholm in 2002 and 2003, and the collection display in Oslo between 2007 and 2011. The museum bought the picture in 1907. This is a work, then, that has been available to the public almost without interruption for more than a century.
The back instead of the face
The pose is unusual for an evening portrait: the sitter is on the chair the wrong way round, so that it is chiefly her back and shoulders that face the viewer, while the face is seen only from the side. That is why the largest light area on the canvas is the skin of the shoulders and not the face. This is exactly what gives the picture a quiet, almost domestic mood, although the subject is a dress for the evening.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the dress is the hardest part: it is made of yellowish, pink and grey tones that must stay distinct, or the fabric collapses into a single white surface. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a seated woman in evening dress, turned the wrong way round on the chair.
- Technique: oil on canvas, a pale dress against a grey-green wall.
- Sizes: portrait format, from 42 x 50 cm to 164 x 200 cm; 75 x 90 cm and 90 x 110 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: the museum’s title gives only the name, not the dress.
If the same period interests you, see also Portrait of Suzanne Bambridge, Interior from the Artist’s Home, rue Carcel and Roses and Statuette. The museum record gives the measurement as height by width: 65 x 54 cm.
