Provenance

Helen Brooks

Brooks, Gerald Mrs.
Noel, Helen

American

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This painting shows a woman sitting upright in a yellow-and-tan reclining chair, her body turned to the right, her face turned toward us. Her skin is pale, with shades of pale yellow and light pink, and shadows in a pale green shade. She has deep-set brown eyes, arched eyebrows, and a small pink mouth set in a neutral expression. Her curling hair is light purple and put in an updo. She is wearing a white and lilac polka-dot blouse with puffy sleeves, complemented by a long skirt with stripes of black, gray, and green. In her lap, she holds a small black, tan, and light-green dog, cradling it gently with both hands. The background features a grassy area enclosed by a wooden fence painted with lines of green, teal, and dark red, with a large, slightly bent tree trunk visible to the left. The sky above has a cloudy appearance made by crisscrossing lines of white, purple, pink, and green. The brushstrokes in the painting are thick and visible, especially those in the background. In some places, like the fence, the tree trunk, and the back of the chair, the light brown surface under the paint is visible.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Lady with a Dog, 1891, oil on cardboard, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.22

Lady with a Dog

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1891 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1972.9.22

We look out onto a landscape with tawny-brown haystacks and trees among a patchwork of moss, lime, mint, and pine-green fields in this stylized, horizontal painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, along the bottom edge of the canvas, a woman wearing a white cap and dress and a navy-blue jacket stands among three black and white spotted cows, which form a line facing our left in profile. Several round, tangerine-orange forms surround the head of the cow near the lower right corner. The strip of land on the other side of the cows is divided into alternating rows of spring green and coral pink to our left, and forest green dotted with white to our right. The landscape stretches to the horizon, which comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. Rectangular parcels of land are dotted with four rust-brown haystacks beyond the cows, and trees cluster around several brown roofs in the distance to our right. A band of cream-white clouds lines the horizon beneath the topaz-blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint against the white of the cow in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”
Paul Gauguin, Haystacks in Brittany, 1890, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.11

Haystacks in Brittany

Paul Gauguin · 1890 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1972.9.11