Portrait de Madeleine Pissard en Roxane 1921

Jacques-Émile Blanche painted this portrait of Madeleine Pissard, posing as Roxane, with confident strokes and a palette of muted greens, creams, and browns. Imagine Blanche in his studio, brush in hand, circling his subject. It's like he’s trying to capture not just Madeleine's likeness, but the spirit of Roxane, the witty and intellectual heroine from Cyrano de Bergerac! The paint is applied with a visible energy, the strokes thick and deliberate, giving the surface a lively texture. See how the stripes on her dress aren’t perfectly uniform? I bet that was a conscious choice, to keep the eye moving and the painting breathing. The way he’s rendered her hand, delicately holding a small object, speaks volumes. What does it mean? Is it a flower? A love token? I wonder if Blanche was thinking of Manet or Degas while painting this, those earlier Impressionists also loved to play with costume, character, and light. Ultimately, that's how artists keep the conversation going, picking up threads from the past and weaving them into something new.