Portrait of a Young Woman, Pierre Oliver Joseph Coomans (1816-1871), oil on canvas, 19 x 15 in. (48 x 38 cm). The link is to the Wikimedia Commons page from which you can view or download a large image. The image source is a 2017 Bonham’s auction, so I assume the painting is in a private collection.

Beautifully and delicately rendered, this portrait is an exercise in softly turned transitions, soft edges and carefully controlled color and value relationships.

I love the little splashes of light on her hair and costume, and even on the ends of the eyelashes on the lower lid of her right eye (to our left, images above, second from top).

Look at the simple, painterly brush strokes that make up the highlights on her hair.

Hunting in the Pontine Marches, Horace Vernet, oil on canvas, 40 x 54 in. (100 x 137 cm), in the collection of the National Galleryy of Art, DC. You can zoom or download a high resolution image from their page.

Every once in a while, I come across a landscape that captures my intention, and look up the artist’s work only to find they are not at all landscape painters, and the painting I’m admiring is an exception.

Such is the case with this painting, and it’s companion piece, Departure for the Hunt in the Pontine Marshes, which I wrote about in 2018.

French painter Horace Vernet, who was active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was not known for his landscapes., but rather for historic battle scenes, portraits and exotic costume.

This and the companion piece hang together in the National Gallery of Art, in DC; and I always make sure to spend a few minutes with them when I’m there.

I love Vernet’s value arrangement — playing hide and seek with our visual interest. Sometimes we’re drawn to things in the light, and sometimes in the dark. I also like the textures he uses on the tree trunks, both smooth and rough, some just obvious split brush marks..

I also think of his color scheme as a pretty good example of limiting a color range, and carefully measuring out a percentage for each color range, with the most highly chromatic color — orange in this case — at the 10% range.

I recommend zooming or downloading the image in the NGA site to get a feeling for it as a whole.The play of light through the composition doesn’t read well in my small image (images above, top) or the separate crops.