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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.”

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

An Elderly Peasant Woman, c. 1878

Not on View

Medium

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

Dimensions

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

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke

Catalogue Raisonné

Le Pelley Fonteny 1991, no. 247

Accession Number

1996.30.1

Artists / Makers

Léon Augustin Lhermitte (artist) French, 1844 - 1925

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower left in black chalk: Leon Lhermitte

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

Jerdein, Charles
Nahum at the Leicester Galleries, Peter
Tanenbaum, Joey and Tobey
Weiss

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.