Portrait of Rebeca Matte

Corcos painted the Portrait of Rebeca Matte in 1929, when he was seventy-three years old, demonstrating that he continued to receive significant portrait commissions well into old age. Rebeca Matte Bello (1875–1929) was a Chilean sculptor of considerable reputation, the first Latin American woman to receive recognition in European sculptural circles, and a figure in the international artistic elite that circulated between Paris, Rome, and Florence. That Corcos was chosen to paint her portrait suggests both mutual awareness between their professional worlds and Corcos's sustained standing as the portraitist of distinguished women across European and international society. The date coincides with the year of her death, giving the portrait a particular resonance as a final record of a remarkable figure.

Corcos's late portrait technique retains the precision and psychological attentiveness of his earlier work, and a subject who was herself an artist would likely have encouraged an especially penetrating characterization. The palette of the late 1920s reflects the period's somewhat more muted coloristic conventions compared to the warm Salon tones of his earlier career, yet Corcos's fundamental approach to facial modelling remained consistent.