Portrait of a Woman with a Black Fichu (c. 1878): Artwork and History

Portrait of a Woman with a Black Fichu (c. 1878) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

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. The woman’s coiffure, a pile of blue-black hair with curly bangs, helps date this work to the late 1870s.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman with a Black Fichu
• Date: c. 1878
• Artist attribution: Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)
• Place of origin: Paris
• 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.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1933.436

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.