Henriette with large hat

Evenepoel's 'Henriette with Large Hat' of 1899 belongs to his final productive year, painted in the months before his death from typhoid fever. Henriette was Louise de Millecamps, his companion and the mother of his son Charles—a woman he called by that name within their circle. The large hat of the title is both a period fashion detail and a compositional challenge: wide-brimmed hats created dynamic silhouettes that tested a painter's ability to integrate bold headgear with the face beneath. The work's presence in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium places it among Belgium's most significant holdings of Evenepoel's art. That he was painting Henriette with evident care and attention in 1899 suggests the ongoing vitality of his personal portraiture even as his health was declining. The painting stands as one of his last major figure works and as a record of the woman who shared his Paris life during the decade of his most important creative production.

The wide-brimmed hat creates a compositional structure that frames the face while challenging conventional portrait proportion. Evenepoel would need to balance the hat's dominant silhouette with the facial presence that anchors the portrait. The interplay of warm skin tones against the hat's material gives the painting its tonal organization.