Portrait of the actress Alice Regnault
Giovanni Boldini, 1880
Portrait of the actress Alice Regnault, painted by Giovanni Boldini around 1880, although some sources date the work to about 1884. Augustine-Alexandrine Roulet, known as Alice Regnault, had a brief stage career in the early 1870s before marrying the writer Octave Mirbeau. Boldini was drawn to the world of entertainment, and he saw in actresses and dancers an ideal of beauty he wanted to capture. Here the sitter is seated in a sensual, intimate pose, dressed in a informal boudoir outfit of lace-trimmed camisole, corset and petticoat. She is probably in her dressing room. The unfinished quality of the painting gives a glimpse of the artist's working process. Boldini also painted the same sitter on horseback in a more conventional image, which invites a comparison between two ways of presenting her: the public and the private.
- Painter
- Giovanni Boldini
- Date
- 1880
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 102 × 82 cm
- Movement
- Impressionism
- Genre
- portrait
- Depicts
- sitting, negligee, actress, Alice Regnault, woman
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