Girl in a Straw Bonnet

Carrier-Belleuse’s portraits of women are few, and for them he often worked in a neo-Rococo mode, participating in the eighteenth-century revival that began and flourished in the mid-nineteenth century. The identity of the sitter of the present bust is unknown. The women Carrier-Belleuse portrayed were generally actresses or singers, wives or daughters of friends, and high society ladies, whose identities were discreetly concealed.