"Girlie Magazine"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

I took a break from a larger painting and enjoyed a looser, more painterly scene in the Art Institute of Chicago.  Edouard Manet's Woman Reading is in the company of other French Impressionists in a very popular gallery at the museum - frequently mixed up with Claude Monet, another famous Impressionist.

Woman Reading was painted in Manet's later years, a very quick-brushstroke, almost plein-aire quality of a young, modern woman taking a break at a cafe with a magazine and a beer.  If you're ever standing in front of this painting, look close, the brushstrokes are numerous and somewhat frantic - as if he was trying to capture the woman before she gets up and leaves the cafe.  And multi, multi, colors layered on top of other colors - the definition of Impressionism.  I tried my best to let loose - loving the form of the woman viewing the painting.