Portrait of Mrs Gedon

Portrait of Mrs Gedon at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich is one of Leibl's finest early portraits, painted in 1869 when he had just been celebrated at the Paris Salon and had met Courbet, whose influence on his development was decisive. The sitter, wife of the Munich sculptor Lorenz Gedon, is presented with the unflinching directness that characterized Leibl's approach to all his portrait subjects. He was never interested in flattery or idealization — what interested him was the precise optical truth of a face under particular lighting conditions, and Mrs Gedon's portrait demonstrates this commitment with particular force.

The face is painted with exceptional technical control, building up skin tones in carefully judged layers that convey both the specific character of the face and the general quality of light falling across it. The dark, loosely painted background throws the carefully rendered face into sharp relief.