Op een stoel zittende dame, van achteren gezien 1800 - 1900

This small watercolor by Camille Chenou Levesque depicts a seated woman, observed from behind. The fluid, translucent quality of watercolor allows for soft gradations of tone and a sense of light filtering through the scene. Consider the labor embedded in the woman's clothing and elaborate hairstyle, all products of skilled trades. Yet Levesque’s rapid, sketch-like style of painting sidesteps any sense of formal portraiture, and so, her social class remains ambiguous. The choice of watercolor – a portable, relatively inexpensive medium – suggests a move away from the grand traditions of oil painting towards a more intimate, immediate mode of expression. By emphasizing the ephemeral and the everyday, Levesque quietly subverts conventional hierarchies of value within the art world, elevating the status of both the medium and her subject.