Portrait of woman with red belt

Portrait of Woman with Red Belt by Marie Bermond, dated around 1900 and held at the Gaillac Museum of Fine Arts, uses a strong chromatic accent — the red belt — to animate an otherwise restrained female portrait. The red accent performs a compositional function: it draws the eye to the centre of the figure, articulating the waist and introducing chromatic warmth into a composition that might otherwise be dominated by the cooler tones of dress and background. Such deliberate colour decisions reflect awareness of Post-Impressionist colour theory even within an essentially academic approach.

Bermond places the red belt at the compositional centre, using it as a colour anchor around which the rest of the palette is organized. The cool tones of the dress and background set off the red effectively, and the warm tones of the face are related harmonically to the belt's chromatic intensity.