Pastel "young Woman With A Parasol" Signed Sonia Routchin (1879 - 1931)

Important framed pastel titled "Young Woman with a Parasol," signed Sonia Routchine.
The pastel is in good condition, although there are some minor imperfections to the frame and the inside of the glass could be cleaned (marks, contact with the material).
There is a torn label on the reverse.

Frame dimensions: 175 cm × 110 cm;
image dimensions: 160 cm × 95 cm.

Sonia Routchine-Vitry, born September 29, 1878, in Odessa and died March 29, 1931, in Paris, was a Russian-born French painter, specializing in portraits, figures, and flowers.

Sonia Sophie Routchine (Sonia Markovna Routchina) was born in Odessa (then in the Russian Empire) to Abraham Meyer Routchine, a cabinetmaker, and Léa Bazile Savitche, who immigrated to France at the end of the 19th century. Her father became a naturalized French citizen in 1895. In 1923, she married the physician Georges Vitry. The witnesses were the art historian Paul Vitry and the writer Roland Dorgelès, who had married Hania Routchine (1885-1959), an opera singer and Sonia's sister, three months earlier. A student of Jules Adler at the Académie Julian, as well as Fernand Pelez, Ferdinand Humbert, and Gabrielle Debillemont-Chardon, Sonia Routchine was a portraitist and painter of miniatures, nudes, landscapes, figures, and flowers. She also produced drawings in sanguine and black chalk. Critics praised the diversity of her palette, the truthfulness of her portraits, and the exceptional colors of her still lifes. Besides her miniature portraits, which she sold to a wealthy clientele, she developed her style towards less figurative works in the exhibitions of the interwar period. She exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1899 until her death in 1931. There, she received an honorable mention in 1910, a bronze medal in 1914, a silver medal in 1924, and another silver medal in 1929. Her friend Marcelle Rondenay, the first woman to be shortlisted for the Prix de Rome, painted her portrait in 1906. She gained recognition at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1907. She exhibited at the Society of Miniatures, Watercolors, and Precious Arts in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1912 and 1914 (Portrait of a Young Woman in a Red Turban), she exhibited at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in 1915 at the French Institute of the United States in New York. In 1913 and 1914, she exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. From 1913 to 1931, she exhibited at the Salon of the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors [16] numerous portraits of women, pastels or miniatures, as well as still lifes and flower paintings, and won the still life prize there in 1922 and the Union's first prize in 1929 (that year she exhibited six paintings, including a nude, a portrait, a goldfish, flowers, and a samovar). In 1926, she exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. She was appointed Officer of Public Instruction in 1927. A sudden illness cut short her career; she died in 1931 at the age of 52 at her home on rue du Cirque in the 8th arrondissement[23], after having sent her last work, Symphonie, to the Salon. She was buried on March 31, 1931, in Montparnasse Cemetery.