
During the 1890s, the Belgian town of Nafraiture, located in the rugged Ardennes region on the southeastern border with France, served as the rural backdrop for many of Léon Frédéric’s vivid and psychologically intense portraits. In this recently acquired painting, Frédéric captures the peculiar features of a young girl with red hair. Wearing a blue dress, she sits in a verdant field before the town’s church and modest houses. The positioning of her head combined with her gaze at the viewer, which appears somewhat distorted in her proper left eye, is both penetrating and detached, creating an impression of shyness mixed with curiosity and caution.
Frédéric was an idiosyncratic artist who worked primarily in a Realist style during a period when Impressionism and Post-Impressionism dominated the European art world. Later, he turned to a symbolist mode of representation, combining elements of realism and mysticism to convey the difficult social conditions of the working class at the turn of the nineteenth century. His approach to painting was rooted in the naturalism conveyed by early Flemish, German, and Italian artists, and much of his portraiture recalls the realism, individuality, and intimacy reflected in early modern portraits.
I first saw this painting at The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in the spring of 2019 and was immediately struck by the little girl’s somewhat homely, yet charming appearance. I inquired about the portrait several times afterward, always hoping the cost might decrease so that it would become part of the Museum’s permanent collection. This past summer, the Ackland was fortunate to acquire the work when the dealer sold it at auction. The composition’s luminous variations of red, blue, and green, combined with the sitter’s striking and mysterious countenance, create a truly dynamic portrait of psychological depth that will undoubtedly have a commanding presence in the galleries.
Image credit:
Léon Frédéric, Belgian, 1856-1940, Young Ardennaise Girl in a Blue Dress, 1896, oil on panel, 20 5/8 × 15 in. (52.4 × 38.1 cm). The Peck Collection, TC 756.