Woman's Head
c. 1890
Medium
Oil on cardboard
Dimensions
60.8 × 49.1 cm (19 1/4 × 24 in.); Framed: 75 × 63.5 × 7.7 cm (29 1/2 × 25 × 3 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
81525
Art Historical Context
Albert Besnard's *Woman's Head* (c. 1890) invites museum visitors into the intimate world of late 19th-century European portraiture. This oil on cardboard, measuring 60.8 × 49.1 cm (19 1/4 × 24 in.), resides in the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Painting and Sculpture of Europe. Besnard, a distinguished French artist active during the Belle Époque, crafted this work amid a vibrant era of artistic experimentation, bridging academic traditions with more expressive styles. Besnard's oeuvre often emphasized luminous skin tones and fluid brushwork, hallmarks of his painterly approach inf...
About the Artist
Albert Besnard
Paul-Albert Besnard, known as Albert Besnard, was born on June 2, 1849, in Paris to an artistic family: his father, Louis Adolphe Ferdinand Besnard, was a history painter and pupil of Ingres, while his mother, Marie Louise Pauline Vaillant, was a noted miniaturist trained under Lizinska de Mirbel. Precociously talented, he began his training under Jean-François Brémond before entering the École de...