Théodule Ribot

Fiercely independent, Ribot worked mainly in isolation, underappreciated by most but hailed by a small number of contemporaries who appreciated his originality. He struggled to achieve economic success and often found models for his works close at hand among his family. The artist's daughter Louise (1857-1916) was one of his favorite models. Here Ribot has depicted her in the manner of Rembrandt's late portraits, with only her face illuminated. A painting of Louise, with her mother Marie Clementine Germain (1819-1903), likely dates from 1872 and is in the Musée des beaux-arts, Bordeau. While she faces the other direction, her features, repeated across paintings and drawings by Ribot, are unmistakable. A later painting exhibited in the 1884 Paris Salon depicts an older Louise (Musée des beaux-arts, Reims). Here Ribot has used inky washes, thickened with gum arabic and layered, to portray Louise at fifteen years old, with her hair down and wearing a necklace. Louise and her brother Germain became artists, working in a manner indebted to their father and specializing in still-life subjects.