Portrait of a Woman

Jean Léon Gérôme · 1851

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

92.6 × 73.7 cm (36 1/2 × 29 in.); Framed: 116.9 × 99.1 × 10.1 cm (46 × 39 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

Portrait of a Woman captures the quiet authority that Gérôme brought to his early figurative work — a controlled intimacy that stands apart from the theatrical Orientalist canvases that would later define his reputation. Painted in 1851, the work belongs to the French academic tradition at its most disciplined: Gérôme had trained under Paul Delaroche and absorbed a reverence for finish, proportion, and the precise rendering of skin and fabric. His portraits reward close looking, with subtle gradations of tone built up through thin, almost invisible brushwork that gives the surface a luminous, porcelain-like quality. By 1851, Gérôme had already attracted attention at the Salon — his breakthrough had come four years earlier with a bold genre scene that scandalized and delighted critics in equal measure — but this portrait shows a more restrained, studied side of his talent. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the original as part of a collection that spans his long and prolific career. Each hand-painted oil reproduction is made to order by a skilled painter working directly from the source, replicating Gérôme's layered technique and tonal precision on canvas — so the nuance and presence of the original translate faithfully into your own space.