Paul Constant Soyer (1823-1903) - Study Of A Woman, école d'écouen British Museum...

Oil on canvas signed "Paul Soyer" lower left, by Paul-Constant Soyer (1823-1903). The work is a portrait study of an elderly woman wearing a pale head-cloth, her hand raised above her brow as if shielding her eyes to peer into the light, dressed in a white blouse and a dark bodice. Rendered in broad, richly impasted and vibrant brushwork, this "life study" reflects the mastery of the genre and portrait painter, in the vein of the working-class figures he painted around Écouen (Val-d'Oise).

41 x 32,5 cm

Paul-Constant Soyer (Paris, 1823 – Écouen, 1903) was a French painter and engraver, a pupil of Léon Cogniet. Settling in Écouen alongside Pierre-Édouard Frère, he was one of the figures of the artists' colony known as the "École d'Écouen". A painter of genre scenes, portraits and still lifes, medalled at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he is represented in many museums (Petit Palais, Musée d'Orsay, Palace of Versailles, British Museum, Walters Art Museum, Manchester Art Gallery).