Portrait of Jo Bauer-Stumpff

Portrait of Jo Bauer-Stumpff, painted around 1900 and now in the RCE depot collection, depicts a woman from Witsen's professional and social circle. The portrait carries the quality of attention that Witsen reserved for sitters he knew well — unhurried, observant, interested in character rather than status. His portraits of women in this period resist the idealizing tendency of fashionable portraiture, presenting their subjects with a directness closer to his approach in landscape and urban subjects: observed, not constructed.

Witsen positions the sitter against a tonal background that supports without distracting from the figure, his handling of face and costume showing careful attention to light and material quality. The portrait avoids the formulaic three-quarter pose of conventional portraiture in favor of a less calculated placement.