Q104444793

Painted in 1890, this canvas by Jean-Jacques Henner in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Paris falls in his late career, one year after his election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The 1890s were a complex decade for Henner: official honors accumulated, but the art world was increasingly dominated by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, movements that rendered his sfumato academicism somewhat retrograde in the eyes of the avant-garde. Nevertheless, Henner continued to exhibit and sell successfully, sustained by a devoted collectors' base and by institutional appreciation of his long career. His technique in the 1890s remained largely consistent with his mature style, though some critics noted a slight softening of form and a deepening of the atmospheric quality in his backgrounds. Works from 1890 show an artist secure in his method if increasingly separated from the currents reshaping French painting.

Oil on canvas in Henner's late manner: the sfumato blending is if anything more extreme than in earlier decades, with forms almost dissolving into their surrounding atmosphere. Warm flesh tones persist, but there is a slightly dreamlike quality that appealed to Symbolist admirers while striking more traditionally-minded critics as insufficiently resolved.