Mlle S. Manthey

Mlle S. Manthey is a portrait from Gauguin's Copenhagen period, painted in late 1884 or early 1885 when he was living miserably in Denmark with his wife Mette and her family while attempting, with little success, to sell tarpaulins for a French firm. The sitter was a young woman from Mette's social circle. This canvas represents an awkward phase in Gauguin's development: he had given up his stockbroker's salary to paint full time in 1883, and the Copenhagen years were marked by financial humiliation, marital strain, and artistic isolation far from the Parisian avant-garde. He left Denmark permanently in 1885, leaving Mette and their children behind.

The portrait reflects the bourgeois realist mode Gauguin was practicing before his full Impressionist conversion, though Pissarro's influence shows in the handling of the background. The brushwork is careful and descriptive, and the palette relatively conservative — earthy mid-tones with little of the chromatic boldness of his later work.