33. Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Portrait of an Old Woman Seated in Front of a Door
| Artist | Bernard Boutet de Monvel, French, Paris 1881–São Miguel Island, Azores, Portugal 1949 |
| Title, Date | Portrait of an Old Woman Seated in Front of a Door (recto); Sketch of a Woman’s Head (verso), 1897 |
| Medium | Watercolor, pen, and black ink over black chalk, heightened with gouache (recto); charcoal (verso) |
| Dimensions | 21 1/2 × 18 3/4 in. (54.6 × 47.6 cm) |
| Inscriptions + Marks | Lower right: Bernard B. de Monvel / Juillet 97 à Nemours |
| Provenance | [W. M. Brady & Co. New York]; Mary Sayles Booker Braga (1921–2014, Middleburg, Va., widow of Bernardo Rionda Braga [d. 1986]); sale, Sotheby’s, New York, October 19, 2015, no. 540, unsold; sale, Stair, Hudson, N.Y., April 30, 2016, no. 57. [Mathieu Néouze, Paris, until 2019; to Weisberg]; Yvonne and Gabriel Weisberg, Minneapolis |
| Exhibition History | "Reflections on Reality: Drawings and Paintings from the Weisberg Collection," Mia, 2022–23 |
| Credit Line | Promised gift of Gabriel P. and Yvonne M.L. Weisberg, Minneapolis |
Bernard Boutet de Monvel would make his name as a cosmopolitan society portraitist. As a child, however, he spent time in Paris and Nemours, the ancient town in the French countryside where his father, the famous children’s book illustrator Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel (cat. nos. 36–37), kept a large home and studio. It was in Nemours that Bernard met people like the woman portrayed in this drawing—those who adhered to traditional ways in work, costume, and custom. In his teens, while still training to become a painter, he began depicting Nemouriens in a series of drawings, prints, and watercolors.
The care with which Boutet de Monvel developed this study is apparent in the phases of its production. He first sketched the subject in black chalk. Once he had settled on the outlines and contours, he delineated them in pen and ink. He then added watercolor, often working wet in wet so the transparent colors would flow together. He finished with touches of stiff, opaque gouache (watercolor mixed with lead-white paint). All this from a sixteen-year-old.
The young artist was no mere technician. He also captured a mood of quiet reverie. The woman sits in the warmth of the light flowing through the open door on a cool, sunny day. Her wizened skin looks translucent. Her eyes appear downcast, if they are open at all. A wattle fence surrounds her garden. The cracks and scuffs on the door tell us that she can no longer maintain her home to perfection. Her bony, perhaps arthritic, hands reveal a lifetime of chores. Now, at last, she rests.
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