Girl in Red Kimono

Description

Collectors and museum visitors have kept coming back to this painting for a simple reason: the figure holds the eye without asking for it. Over the decades, writers on Dutch art have singled out Girl in Red Kimono as a clear example of how George Hendrik Breitner could build a mood from almost nothing but paint handling. The red of the kimono does the early work of drawing attention, and everything else in the picture is arranged to keep that attention there.

About Girl in Red Kimono

Breitner painted in Amsterdam in the closing years of the nineteenth century, at a point in his career when he had moved past strict realism toward something looser and more atmospheric. Here the sitter is placed against a plain, softened ground, so that the eye has nowhere else to go. The kimono is built from broad, confident strokes rather than fine detail, and it is this broadness that gives the fabric its weight and its glow. Light falls unevenly across the figure, catching the shoulder and the fold of cloth while letting the rest sink into shadow.

Look closely and the brushwork itself becomes the subject. Breitner was working in the same years as the French Impressionists, and like them he trusted the eye to finish what the hand only suggested. Small passages of thicker paint sit beside thin, almost dry strokes, and the contrast between them carries as much feeling as the color does. It is this rough, direct handling, more than the pose or the setting, that keeps the painting from feeling settled or decorative.

ByMuseum artists recreate this canvas as a hand-painted oil painting reproduction, working by hand rather than by machine or print process. Each painter studies the palette and the direction of the brushwork before starting, so the reproduction carries the same reds, the same shadowed ground, and the same visible texture as the original. The result is a hand-painted replica built in oil on artist-grade canvas, with raised paint and a surface that reads differently in daylight and lamplight, the way the original does.

The hand-painted reproduction

What you receive:

• A hand-painted oil reproduction on canvas, not a printed copy
• A choice of sizes to suit your wall
• A gallery-ready canvas, ready to hang
• A certificate of authenticity included with your order
• Free worldwide shipping, with no shipping charge to any country