Portrait of Madame Jules Ricard, née Augustine Bulteau
Fernand Khnopff (Belgian, 1858–1921)
c. 1893
- Medium
- black chalk on tan-colored vellum
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 40.5 x 32.4 cm (15 15/16 x 12 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Severance and Greta Millikin Trust
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Although Fernand Khnopff was best known for depicting femmes fatales—threatening or dangerous women—this drawing offers a personalized and intimate depiction of its sitter, Augustine Bulteau. A prolific novelist and writer, Bulteau hosted a regular salon for artists such as Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec. She appears dressed conservatively but fashionably, holding her place in a book as if interrupted while reading.
