Two Women with Muffs (Deux femmes aux manchons)

The Dutch-born artist Constantin Guys began his career as a member of the first generation of illustrators employed by newspapers, documenting wars and political events for broadsheets and magazines including The Illustrated London News and Punch. His work enabled him to travel widely across Europe and beyond, and he witnessed the revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War. In the late 1850s, Guys settled in Paris, where his sketches of city life, from high society to street workers, earned him great acclaim. In this work, Guys captures the glamour of a momentary encounter. Two fashionable young women take a wintertime stroll, with the long shadows at their feet suggesting that it may be late afternoon. Guys used tentative pencil markings to plan the initial placement of the figures on the sheet before using increasingly pigmented washes of black ink to indicate volume. Discreet areas of watercolour, such as touches of flesh tones on the young women’s faces and a little blue for their bonnets and ribbons, enliven the work. The final outlining of the figures with the point of a brush clarifies the details while reaffirming the drawing’s graphic qualities. In a manner akin to nineteenth-century fashion plates, Guys describes the women’s voluminous coats, paying particular attention to their matching accessories of ribboned bonnets and elegant muffs. His careful observation extends to registering the flounce of the skirt in motion, resulting in the flash of a slender ankle. Guys disliked staged compositions, preferring to capture fleeting moments, in the manner of a reporter. It is this quality that led the eminent French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire to declare Guys the quintessential ‘painter of modern life’.