Woman Sketching in a Landscape

c. 1830

Barthélemy Vieillevoye, a Belgian artist who trained at the Antwerp Academy, worked predominantly in a neoclassical style. During a trip to Paris in 1824, he visited the studios of Anne-Louis Girodet and Antoine-Jean Gros, which influenced his approach to portraiture. As seen in this portrait, Vieillevoye had a talent for depicting fashionable hairstyles and clothing, painting upwards of 175 portraits after 1830. The landscape in the background likely depicts a place near the city of Liège, where, from 1834 until his death, Vieillevoye was the first director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. The sitter’s tartan plaid shawl might indicate her nationality, though her identity is unknown.

Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	51 9/16 x 38 9/16 in. (131 x 98 cm)
Object Number	1982.60
Acquisition	Acquired by the Clark, 1982
Status	On View

Image Caption

Barthélemy Vieillevoye, Woman Sketching in a Landscape, c. 1830, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, Acquired by the Clark, 1982.60

Select Bibliography

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Duc de Montbrun, Paris; Gaston Levy, Paris; [Auslander and Wittgenstein, New York, sold to the Clark, Dec. 1982]; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1982.