
Read the visual description
This vertical charcoal and chalk drawing shows the head and shoulders of a light-skinned, elderly woman facing our left almost in profile. Light from our left falls across her jowled, deeply wrinkled face. She looks off to our left with clear, deep-set eyes under a raised brow. She has a long, bulbous nose, and her wide mouth is closed, her thin lips set. Her hair is covered by a long scarf tied at the base of her head, and one end falls over the shoulder closer to us. There appears to be a kerchief wrapped around her neck, and a loose-fitting jacket is buttoned all the way up. She is shown against a background filled with swipes of charcoal with dark shadows around her that get lighter in the upper right. Barely visible against the gray background, the artist signed the lower left, “Leon Lhermitte.”
National Gallery of Art · Drawing
An Elderly Peasant Woman
Léon-Augustin Lhermitte
- Date
- c. 1878
- Medium
- charcoal with black chalk, with stumping, scraping erasing and wetting, on wove paper
- Dimensions
- overall: 47.5 x 39.6 cm (18 11/16 x 15 9/16 in.)
- Classification
- Drawing
- Accession number
- 1996.30.1
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke
- Time span
- 1876 to 1900
- Department
- CG-E
Subjects and terms
- French
- occupation
- genre
- female
- portrait
- Peasant
Provenance
Weiss; Charles Jerdein, London (until 1979); Joey and Toby Tanenbaum, Canada; (Peter Nahum, London); designated purchase 1996 by NGA (Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke).
Inscription
lower left in black chalk: Leon Lhermitte
NGA object ID 94212. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.