What a portrait! Despite the conventional format, this is not an idealised society portrait of a wealthy and important person (a Baroness no less!). This is a living, breathing woman, whose age is not hidden.
I look at this painting and I almost feel like I could know her - she is so real, strong yet with a fragility too. Those eyes engaging us so directly are incredibly soulful and it feels like she is really letting us in - there’s no effort to conceal herself with a false smile.
Although it’s clear from her clothing and bearing that she is a woman of some substance, her garments and jewelry are loosely depicted. It is her hands and her face that draw the eye, and make it into such a psychological portrait.
The artist, Clara von Rappard, showed her talent as an artist at an early age. At age 4, she began her first attempts at drawing and painting, and three years later she created her first sketchbooks. She was extremely lucky enough to be born into a family that was both liberal enough to encourage her to study art and wealthy enough to be able to afford the ridiculously expensive private lessons and individual courses that were the only options open to women of that time.
She travelled all over Europe in her pursuit of learning, beginning at age 11 with lessons in drawing and art history in Italy. Over the next 20 years, she continued to add to her artistic education, studying still life and sculpture in Berlin, drawing in Rome, anatomy in Hanover, and portraiture in London, while also travelling and exhibiting widely, illustrating books and undertaking commissions.
Around 1890, Von Rappard developed multiple sclerosis which slowed down her artistic activity and her ability to travel, and unfortunately, in the last ten years of her life a series of strokes limited her capacity to create art almost completely.
Portrait of Helene Baroness von Fabrice (1885) by Clara von Rappard (1857-1912), oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Bern.
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