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Details / Information for Old Woman

Old Woman

c. 1923–24
(Russian, 1893–1943)
Russia (worked in France), 20th century
oil on canvas
Framed: 88.9 x 78.7 x 8.6 cm (35 x 31 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 65 x 54 cm (25 9/16 x 21 1/4 in.)
Gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund 1988.94
Location: not on view
Public Domain
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Did You Know?

Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was inspired by Soutine's work for his short story "Skin."

Description

The woman portrayed here seems to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her ghostlike silhouette in tones of green and brown is bent over, her eyes look downward. The positioning of her large hands emphasize an inward-looking, melancholic state of mind. Chaïm Soutine’s early experience of religious persecution had a large influence on his art. As an expatriate Russian Jew living in Paris, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He died in 1943 from a stomach ulcer.
Oil painting of a stylized woman in thick, fluid and opaque brushstrokes facing us, eyes looking over our left shoulder. She sits in a green chair, wearing a green dress and drapes her oversized hands over one another on her lap. The orange and grey background is painted in visible strokes that arc around the rounded silhouette of her chair.

Old Woman

c. 1923–24

Chaïm Soutine

(Russian, 1893–1943)
Russia (worked in France), 20th century

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