Portrait de Madame Po (Portrait d'une vieille femme)

Overview

«Портрет старушки. Мадам По» ("Portrait of an old woman. Madame Po") is an oil on canvas of 1880, 55 × 45,5 cm, in the V. I. Surikov Krasnoyarsk Art Museum. The museum describes a head-and-shoulders study of an elderly woman with dark eyes and swarthy skin in a white cap, set against a freely painted dark ground. It places the picture in the period just after Marie's Salon debut of 1880, when she was taking portrait sitters.

History

The museum states the provenance: after the artist's death her mother gave the portrait to the Russian Museum; in 1928 it was transferred to the Krasnoyarsk regional museum (краеведческий музей), and from there it entered the art museum's collection. It is therefore one of the 141 works Marie's mother gave to St Petersburg that did not go on to Ukraine, which is why it escaped the Kharkiv losses (see The Kharkiv Lost Works).

Dating. The museum says 1880 and the Artefact record "1880s". Wikidata gives 1885, which is impossible for an artist who died in 1884. The 1885 memorial catalogue has no "Madame Po"; it does list a Vieille femme (Étude) (no. 56), but at 0,32 × 0,24 m it is too small to be this canvas.

References in Diary

No "Madame Po" (or Pau, Pô) has been found in the diary text.

Related Entries

Sources