Female Profile. Studio For 'Lovers' (Autumn Evening) 1888

Émile Friant made this oil on canvas as a study for a larger composition. It is a celebration of the act of painting itself. Look closely, and you’ll see how Friant has worked the surface, achieving delicate transitions of tone to build up the model’s face. Notice the way the brushstrokes work to describe the different textures – the soft skin, the dark hair pulled back, and the slightly blurred background. Each element is carefully rendered, and yet, the image is far from photographic. As a painter, Friant was part of a long lineage of artists who treated oil paint as a medium capable of capturing light, shadow, and form with incredible nuance. Oil paint is, after all, a manufactured substance, with a complex chemistry that allows for a huge range of effects. By mastering this material, and working within the conventions of portraiture, Friant was positioning himself within the world of fine art. Yet at the same time, he was celebrating the simple, tactile pleasure of applying pigment to canvas, an act of making that is at the heart of both art and craft.