Provenance

Alexandre Bernheim

Bernheim-Jeune, Alexandre

French, 1833 - 1915

Explore Selected Works

Shown from the waist up, a woman with pale, peachy skin reads a book with one elbow propped on a grassy bank in this horizontal painting. The woman’s body is angled to our right, and she looks down at a pale green-covered book held in her right hand, which is in the lower left corner of the composition. The woman has dark brows over hooded eyes, and her dark brown hair falls loosely behind her shoulders. She has a round face, straight nose, and pale lips. She touches her hair with her left hand, to our right, with that pinky delicately crooked. One strap of a sleeveless, pearl-white chemise falls off the shoulder of that arm, and the dress nestles around her belly, revealing much of the other breast. Leafy trees and gray rocks are loosely painted behind her. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “G. Courbet.”
Gustave Courbet, A Young Woman Reading, c. 1866/1868, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.114

A Young Woman Reading

Gustave Courbet · c. 1866/1868 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.114

Charles-François Daubigny, The Farm, 1855, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.116

The Farm

Charles-François Daubigny · 1855 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.116

Bibliography

1978

  • Monneret, Sophie, L'Impressionnisme et son Époque 4 vols. Paris, 1978-1981:I:73-74.