Girl Reading

This painting, 'Girl Reading' (1886-7) is by one Theodore Roussel, who is often rather confusingly referred to as an English artist -- I say confusingly as his name is so obviously French. Of course I discovered when I looked him up that he was born in France but brought up and lived in England. So perhaps that makes him English. I acquired it from that great blog, Books do Furnish a Room, so thanks, Lindsay, for that. I don't know how to talk about art in a scholarly way, but I love the composition -- the way her lovely body makes a diagonal across the paining, and then the scarf, in a very similar colour and tone, almost completes a triangle -- or is it three sides of a square? What the significance of all this is I cannot say, but it is curiously satisfying. Possibly rather daring for the 1880s, too.