The Princesses

Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli · c. 1870

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

29.8 × 60.6 cm (11 3/4 × 23 7/8 in.); Framed: 54.2 × 84.7 × 7.7 cm (21 3/8 × 33 3/8 × 3 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

*The Princesses* glows with the jewel-bright intensity that made Adolphe Monticelli one of the most visually arresting painters of nineteenth-century France. Working largely in Marseille after his Paris years, Monticelli built up his panels with thick, mosaic-like strokes of impasto, layering pigment until figures seem to emerge from a luminous ground rather than simply sit upon it. His compositions — elegant figures in soft, indeterminate settings — echo the fête galante tradition of Watteau, but with a density of surface and richness of colour entirely his own. Vincent van Gogh was so captivated by Monticelli's technique that he and his brother Theo actively collected his work, and Van Gogh credited him as a direct influence on his own approach to loaded, expressive brushwork. Our hand-painted oil reproduction honours Monticelli's method by applying paint to panel with the same layered, tactile quality that defines the original — preserving the warmth, depth, and shimmering texture that no print can replicate.