Dona rera persiana (Woman Against a Blind)

This is a small-format, sketched work, “photographic” in conception, with a partition wall or door in the foreground that cuts off part of the central image of the woman1. The figure is silhouetted in semi-darkness against the light, on a background of blinds penetrated by filaments of light. This connects the picture with more ambitious works by Casas, such as La Terrasa (The Terrace, from ca. 1889, in a private collection), in which the painter also combined a female figure with the light - and it may even be said kinetic - effects of a blind. The spelling of the signature – if it is autographic – would date the work about the time of the painter’s mythical stay with Santiago Rusiñol in Montmartre, while the canvas on which the picture is painted carries the trademark of a Paris firm, Pigall Dupont.