A young woman reading.

Peder Severin Krøyer's 'Young Woman Reading' (1885) depicts the private act of reading — a subject that carried particular significance in the late nineteenth century as literacy and reading culture expanded among women of all social classes. The reading woman was a subject with a long tradition in Northern European painting, from Dutch genre to Whistler's domestic interiors, and Krøyer's treatment brings his characteristic outdoor or interior light sensitivity to this intimate subject. The woman absorbed in her book creates the quality of private reverie that distinguished the best examples of this genre.

Krøyer renders the reading woman with his characteristic sensitivity to the quality of light on the figure — the particular way that reading light (whether from a window, a lamp, or outdoor light) illuminates the face and hands while the book absorbs the reader's attention. His handling captures the quality of absorbed concentration, the woman's unseeing gaze as she follows the text creating the psychological interiority that makes the reading subject so compelling.