Jeaune fille 1872

Léon Bazile Perrault’s painting, Jeaune fille, is made with oil on canvas. The smooth surface is the result of blending – pushing the pigments together on the canvas, which removes any trace of the artist's hand. This technique, beloved of the French academy, was perfected over centuries by many skilled hands; its effect is to create a seemingly perfect and unblemished surface. It's a world away from the look achieved by the Impressionists, Perrault's contemporaries, who used visible brushstrokes to capture a fleeting impression. Here, the effect is to idealize the young woman. Note the whiteness of her shirt, its pure cotton presumably bought rather than home-spun. The red of her headscarf may be the only chromatic accent, but its synthetic dye speaks of modernity. The total effect is far removed from the realities of laboring people, though this is the very subject that Perrault purports to depict. In the end, it’s a painting that makes us consider the labor of representation, and whether it can ever do justice to lived experience.