Portrait de Femme (1885)

Fantin-Latour, Henri (1836-1904)

Portrait de Femme (Portrait of a Woman)
1885
Oil on canvas, 100.3 x 81.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A notebook kept by Fantin’s wife is said to record the circumstances surrounding this picture. The sitter called herself Mme Leroy, a name the artist suspected was false; and she insisted on paying for her portrait in advance. She was accompanied to some of her sittings by an American named Becker, who also commissioned a likeness of himself from Fantin, dated the following year (Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.). The couple’s full identities, and the nature of their relationship, remain unknown. (MET)