Portrait of his daughter, Lisbeth

Eugène Carrière's Portrait of his daughter Lisbeth (1888) is among the French Symbolist painter's most personal works — depicting one of his children within the atmospheric grey-brown monochrome that became his signature. Carrière devoted much of his career to images of his family — his wife, his children — which he rendered in the distinctive smoky, veiled atmosphere that made his work simultaneously intimate and mysterious. The family subjects allowed him to combine genuine emotional connection with his formal preoccupation with form emerging from atmospheric darkness.

Carrière renders Lisbeth in his characteristic monochromatic approach: the figure emerges from a warm brown-grey atmosphere, form suggested more than fully described, the contours dissolving into the surrounding tone. This technique of emergent form was both personal and philosophically motivated — for Carrière, the veil of atmosphere around figures expressed the mystery of human individuality and the uncertain boundary between self and world. The face receives the most concentrated attention, while dress and background dissolve into atmospheric unity.