Young Gypsy Woman

Young Gypsy Woman of 1903, in the MNAC, introduces youth as a variable in Nonell's Roma portraits — the same social marginalisation and material privation represented in a face not yet marked by decades of hardship. The young woman's relative youth does not sentimentalise the subject in Nonell's treatment: she is already possessed of the contained guarded expression characteristic of his mature Roma sitters, a quality of waiting alertness that speaks to a life lived outside the protections of the stable social order. The MNAC's collection of Nonell's work across different years allows viewers to observe how consistent his approach remained across the series despite the variety of individual sitters and postures.

The younger face requires slightly different handling than Nonell's more weathered sitters: the skin is rendered with less textural roughness in the paint surface, the tonal transitions more gradual. Nevertheless the palette remains the characteristic dark earth tones, and the figure is placed within the same shadowed compressed spatial context as all the Roma portraits.