
Portrait of a Woman with a Black Fichu
<p>Using just a few brushstrokes, Manet gave a full sense of this unidentified sitter’s jovial personality. Her amused half-smile may speak to a pleasant exchange between artist and model. This painting offers valuable insight into Manet’s working process. He initially blocked out the figure with dark, painted lines and then moved on to short, precise strokes in the costume and face. Finally, he applied a thinned green wash that was likely the first step toward patterned background, left unfinished.</p> <p>The woman’s coiffure, a pile of blue-black hair with curly bangs, helps date this work to the late 1870s.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1873
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 62.2 × 51.2 cm (24 1/2 × 20 1/8 in.); Framed: 83.8 × 72.7 × 10.8 cm (33 × 28 5/8 × 4 1/4 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Édouard Manet
Artist

Painting
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
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More by Édouard Manet
Jeanne (Spring)
1902 · Etching and foul-biting in black on ivory laid paper
Head of a Woman and Head of a Bearded Man
1880 · Watercolor with pen and brown ink and graphite on cream wove paper
Woman Reading
1880 · Oil on canvas
Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1829–1906) at Bellevue
1880 · Oil on canvas
Woman Reading
1880 · Oil on canvas
The Smoker II
1879 · Drypoint in brown on ivory wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Édouard Manet
- Year
- 1873
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 62.2 × 51.2 cm (24 1/2 × 20 1/8 in.); Framed: 83.8 × 72.7 × 10.8 cm (33 × 28 5/8 × 4 1/4 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1873-013926
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified




