Gabrielle Soëne

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (the USA).

In the portrait of his friend, Roger Fry did not much depart from realism – except that he enlarged the colour panels and refused to elaborate details, which are very few on the canvas. The painting where a slender young woman in a long dark dress sits in an empty room on an ordinary wooden chair against the background of a closed door can be called ascetic. This also applies to the compositional construction and almost monochrome colour schemes. This technique allows the viewer to focus on the character’s face and note the subtle scepticism of her mood.