An Elderly Peasant Woman

c. 1878

Léon Augustin Lhermitte

Artist, French, 1844 - 1925

This vertical charcoal and chalk drawing shows the head and shoulders of a light-skinned, elderly woman facing our left almost in profile. Light from our left falls across her jowled, deeply wrinkled face. She looks off to our left with clear, deep-set eyes under a raised brow. She has a long, bulbous nose, and her wide mouth is closed, her thin lips set. Her hair is covered by a long scarf tied at the base of her head, and one end falls over the shoulder closer to us. There appears to be a kerchief wrapped around her neck, and a loose-fitting jacket is buttoned all the way up. She is shown against a background filled with swipes of charcoal with dark shadows around her that get lighter in the upper right. Barely visible against the gray background, the artist signed the lower left, “Leon Lhermitte.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    charcoal with black chalk, with stumping, scraping erasing and wetting, on wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke

  • Dimensions

    overall: 47.5 x 39.6 cm (18 11/16 x 15 9/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1996.30.1

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Le Pelley Fonteny 1991, no. 247


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Weiss; Charles Jerdein, London (until 1979); Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, Canada; (Peter Nahum, London); designated purchase 1996 by NGA (Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1997

  • Building a Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1997-1998, no. 136.

2012

  • Color, Line, Light: French Drawings, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac. Musée des impressionnismes Giverny and National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, 2012, 62, 159, no. 29 (color). (French title: De Delacroix à Signac: Dessins de la collection Dyke.)

Bibliography

1991

  • Le Pelley Fonteny, Monique. Léon Augustin Lhermitte: catalogue raisonné. Paris: Éditions Cercle d'Art, 1991.

Inscriptions

lower left in black chalk: Leon Lhermitte

Wikidata ID

Q64592951


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