Head of a Woman

Eugène Carrière, a contemporary of the Impressionists, accomplished the illusion of light on a subject by using starkly contrasting tones and a palette devoid of almost all color. His work was associated with the Symbolist art movement prevalent in the 1880s and 1890s, characterized by a soft atmospheric quality meant to capture the “soul” of the model. The grandson and nephew of artists, Carrière began his career as a commercial lithographer. This early experience with printmaking contributed to the dark, monochromatic coloring of the majority of his works. Head of a Woman, characteristic of his early paintings, shows the bright face of a woman against a dark, blurred background, with the one nod to color a crimson flower tucked delicately behind her ear. Carrière moved away from traditional portraiture where the sitter was surrounded by accessories, and instead painted the model with no distractions and dark, expressive eyes embodying woman as a life force. Artists and critics alike hailed Carrière as a genius, and he was popular with 19th-century art collectors in general.