Lady in a White Dress with a Pale Green Cashmere Shawl

Franziska Schöpfer, an artist who worked in Munich, portrayed a young woman in a white dress in a three-quarter–length view with a great richness of detail. A pale green cashmere shawl with a border embroidered with flowers has been draped around the sitter’s arms and one shoulder. Her hands are clasped together. Her rings and the gold bracelets which accentuate her slender wrists do not detract in any way from her face, which appears in the upper quarter of the portrait owing to the format. 

Schöpfer rendered the sitter’s face in such an appealing and captivating manner that the upper and lower curves of the oval create a harmonious arc of suspense. The model’s large dark blue eyes bring depth and an individual expression to her delicate and graceful face, which the artist has rendered in a fine pointillism in pink and brown shades. Her pinned-up dark auburn curls emphasise her narrow heart-shaped face with a decorative little dimple on the chin. The blue sky that takes up a large part of the area and the intimated forest landscape in the lower half of the picture form a peaceful background against which the model stands out expressively. The composition and presentation are reminiscent of works by Louis François Aubry.¹

J. S. O.