Portrait of a Young Woman in White

c. 1798

A pale-skinned woman wearing a filmy white gown sits sideways on a wooden chair in front of a slate-gray wall in this vertical portrait painting. With her body angled to our right, her shins are cut off by the bottom corner of the painting, and she gazes back over her other shoulder, to our left. Her head is tipped toward that shoulder, and she looks into the distance with charcoal-gray eyes below dark brows. Her cheeks are flushed and her small, peach lips are closed. Her black hair is braided in a single horizontal plait above wispy fringe that frames her face and curls down the back of her neck. The low-cut neckline of her ivory-white dress is sheer across her chest, revealing her breasts. The fabric is gathered under a thin band just under her bust, and it drapes down from there. The short sleeve we can see, on her right arm, is tied with two tassels hanging from either end of a string. Her hands rest in her lap, with her left hand, farther from us, on a silky, radish-red cloth that drapes over that knee and around her back. The rest of the cloth is piled on a narrow wooden table edged with gold at the small of her back. The chair on which she sits has a simple wooden panel as the back rest, and the seat is upholstered in fabric with shiny and matte black stripes. Tiny gold bosses line the edge of the chair near the cushion. The background behind her gradually darkens from slate gray at the top of the canvas to a dark charcoal near her legs.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 125.5 x 95 cm (49 7/16 x 37 3/8 in.)
    framed: 148.9 x 119.4 cm (58 5/8 x 47 in.)

  • Accession

    1963.10.118

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(E. Gimpel & Wildenstein, Paris);[1] sold 1914 to Louisine Waldron Elder, later Mrs. Henry Osborne Havemeyer [1855-1929]; (her estate sale, American Art Association, New York, 10 April 1930, no. 79); Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.
[1] The picture's early history is unknown. According to Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney, et al., Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection, Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993: 322, no. 180, it was acquired by Gimpel & Wildenstein from an "unknown source in 1914" and sold by them to Mrs. Havemeyer later that year. Two different accounts of the portrait's earlier provenance, both of dubious accuracy, are contained in the Chester Dale papers in the NGA's curatorial records. According to one of them, apparently furnished by Wildenstein Inc., the portrait was first "sold by Wildenstein to Mr. Gardner, but later bought back and sold to the Havemeyers in about 1912. Miss Cassatt accompanied Mrs. Havemeyer to the Wildenstein gallery in Paris and persuaded her to buy the picture." A different version, sent to Chester Dale by the Paris dealer Etienne Bignou, informed him that "this is the pedigree of the picture by David which you bought at the Havemeyer sale, 'Sold to the French collector Sigismond Bardac of Paris by Mr. Levy. Mrs. Havemeyer bought the picture from Mr. S. Bardac for about $20,000, in 1902 through Miss Mary Cassatt and Baron Christian de Marinitch." It may be noted that a Portrait de femme. Epoque de la Révolution, of somewhat similar dimensions given as 100 x 80 cm in the catalogue, had appeared in an anonymous sale in 1894 (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 15 March, no. 27), when it brought the modest price of 300 francs.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2010

  • From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 2010-January 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1930

  • New York Evening Post. (21 April 1930): repro.

  • New York Herald Tribune. (6 April 1930): repro.

  • New York Sun. (11 April 1930): mention.

  • Pantheon 5 (1930): 217, repro.

  • Antiques 17 (1930): 352, repro.

  • Art News (19 April 1930): mention.

  • Art News (22 March 1930): 22, repro.

  • Beaux-Arts (20 May 1930): 17, repro.

  • Parnassus (October 1930): 48.

  • Home and Field (September 1930): 28, repro.

  • Kunst und Kunstler (28 June 1930): 395, repro.

  • New York American. (11 April 1930): mention.

  • "Rush at Auction of Havemeyer Art." The New York Times. 11 April 1930: 23.

  • New York Evening Journal. (10 May 1930): repro.

1931

  • Art News yearly supplement (16 May 1931): color repro. on back cover.

  • H.O. Havemeyer Collection. Catalogue of Paintings, Prints, Sculpture, and Objects of Art. Portland, Maine, 1931: 502, as by Jacques-Louis David.

1941

  • Catalogue of French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 5, pl. VIII, as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Now the Great French 19th Century in the National Gallery." Art News 40, no. 17 (December 15-31, 1941):repro. p. 16.

1942

  • French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 16, repro., as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

  • Dale, Chester. "The Golden Century of French Art." The New York Times Magazine 17 May 1942: 20, repro.

1944

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 152, color repro., as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

  • French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 17, repro.. as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

1948

  • Kimball, Fiske, and Lionello Venturi. Great Paintings in America. New York, 1948: 162, no. 74, repro., as Mme Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

1953

  • French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 23, repro., as Madame Hamelin as Jacques-Louis David.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 38, as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

  • Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 27, repro., as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 31, repro., as Madame Hamelin by Jacques-Louis David.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 96, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 418, no. 595, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 117, repro.

1986

  • Weitzenhoffer, Frances. The Havemeyers, Impressionism Comes to America. New York, 1986: 219, pl. 153, as by David.

1988

  • Ribeiro, Aileen. Fashion in the French Revolution. London, 1988: 124-125, repro.

1993

  • Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney, et al. Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1993: 322, no. 180, repro.

2000

  • Eitner, Lorenz. French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2000: 213-217, repro.

2023

  • Smee, Sebastian. "They Kept Their Heads, Then Embraced Hedonism." The Washington Post (7 May 1923): E:3, repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20180338

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