Le Goûter (Afternoon Tea)

c. 1880

Oil on canvas, 81.5 × 61.5 cm. Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris

A young woman in a white dress sits at a garden table, looking away from her open book. It is one of the few Bracquemond paintings in a public museum.

The white dress is built from strokes of blue, lilac and pink, not plain white. Impressionists painted whites and shadows in color, as they appear in daylight.
The sitter is the artist's sister, Louise Quivoron.
Bracquemond exhibited with the Impressionists in 1879, 1880 and 1886.
The setting is the garden of the Villa Brancas at Sèvres, just outside Paris.
The City of Paris acquired it in 1919, three years after the artist's death.

The goûter is a light French snack taken in the late afternoon, often outdoors. Historians link such garden scenes to the places women painters could most easily work.

Image: Paris Musées Collections (CC0) · Public domain