#impressionist portraits

The French artist Jacques-Emile Blanche painted this portrait after a photograph of Julia Stephen taken by her aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron (the celebrated photographer and Pre-Raphaelite model), between 1864and1867. The sitter is famous in her own right for being the mother of writer Virginia Woolf, painter Vanessa Bell, and the founder of the Bloomsbury group, Thoby Stephen.

In the artist’s words:

Before I was an artist I was an aspiring clothing designer many years ago. Fashion design slipped into the background as art came to the fore. My longstanding interest in fashion began to return in 2013. This portrait, “Femme au Chapeau Rouge” is a reflection of that and of my interest in photography as well. I recently opened a small photography studio where I took the photo from which this work was created.

“Femme au Chapeau Rouge” was born earlier than expected. I expected to labor long with this idea in the form of a painting but instead she popped out unexpectedly as a digitally manipulated photograph. It is the first formal work of 2017. I think of myself as a neo-modernist artist because I identify so heavily with the European early modern masters. In that respect I see this piece as strongly reflecting a combination of neo-pointilist, neo-cubist and neo-impressionist elements as well as, of course, Mademoiselle Chanel. Source: Saatchi