Elsie Woodbury Brown

Elsie Woodbury Brown was an American woman — the name suggests New England WASP background — whose portrait by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta in 1899 documents the artist's engagement with American clientele in the years surrounding his agent Avery's active market-building. By 1899 Raimundo was in his mid-fifties and had been serving an international market for three decades; American portrait commissions were a natural extension of his established relationships with American collectors and dealers. The canvas is in the Prado, which holds an important group of works by Raimundo documenting the full range of his sitters across Spanish, French, and international circles. The portrait's institutional location in Madrid despite depicting an American subject reflects either a later acquisition history or Raimundo's own retention of the work before it eventually entered the national collection.

American female portraiture of 1899 by Raimundo shows a style that had fully digested both Spanish and French influences into a personal synthesis — elegant, technically accomplished, with a particular sensitivity to the quality of light on fashionable late-Victorian dress. The flesh tones are warm and carefully modeled; the background maintains the silvery atmospheric quality of his mature French-influenced work.