Jean-Louis Forain » The Artist’s Wife Fishing » 1896 » Oil on canvas, 37½ × 39¾ in (95.5 × 101 cm) » French Impressionism
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
From the Goodie Collection · Impressionism
The sun has just gone down. The sky is turning pink and lavender, a flock of birds is wheeling home, and a young woman in a rose-colored dress stands at the edge of a pond with a fishing rod, watching her line. Behind her, a nurse holds a baby, and a dog bounds through the grass. Jean-Louis Forain painted this quiet evening in 1896, and the woman is his wife, the painter Jeanne Forain.
Forain was best known in his day as a sharp-eyed caricaturist of Paris life, drawing for newspapers for more than thirty years. This painting shows a gentler side of him: a private family moment, painted with soft, quick brushstrokes, the way the Impressionists he exhibited with liked to work.
Jeanne in pink
Jeanne stands at the center in a rose-pink dress with a white collar and a bonnet tied under her chin, holding her rod out over the water. She was an artist in her own right. Born in Paris in 1865, she had been encouraged as a girl by the Impressionist Camille Pissarro, and she became known for her pastel portraits, especially of children. She married Forain in 1891.
A nurse and a baby
Just behind her, a nurse in a white cap and apron holds a baby bundled in white. The Forains’ only child, their son Jean-Loup, was born in 1895, the year before this painting, so it is very likely him, out for an evening by the water with his mother.
The dog in the grass
Off to the right, a dark dog races through the long grass, just a few quick strokes of paint, yet you can feel exactly how it moves. Forain had trained his eye drawing people and animals on the fly for newspapers, and here a handful of marks is enough to bring the dog to life.
A private family moment, caught in the last pink light of evening.
The red float
Follow Jeanne’s fishing line down to the water and you will find the smallest detail in the painting: a single dot of bright red, her float, bobbing on the surface. It is the strongest red on the whole canvas, and once you see it, your eye keeps coming back to it.
Reflections
The pond is so still that it works like a mirror. Jeanne’s pink dress and the nurse’s white apron are reflected upside down, softened and blurred, along with the pink glow of the sky. Forain paints the water with long, loose, almost transparent strokes, so that land, sky and water seem to melt together.
Evening sky
Above it all, the sky shifts from pink near the horizon to pale green and lavender, with soft purple clouds drifting across it. A flock of birds, painted as a scatter of tiny dark flicks, wheels toward the trees as night comes on.
And in the lower right corner, cattails and reeds in cool blue-greens rise from the water, framing the scene like the edge of a stage.
About the Painter
Jean-Louis Forain (1852–1931)
Jean-Louis Forain was born in Reims in 1852 and moved to Paris with his family as a boy. He began his career drawing caricatures for Paris journals and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. As a young man he was friends with the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.
He was the youngest artist in the café circle around Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and Degas became his mentor and friend for the rest of his life. Forain showed his work in four of the eight Impressionist exhibitions, between 1879 and 1886.
For more than thirty years he drew for the newspaper Le Figaro and became one of the best-known caricaturists of the Belle Époque, with a sharp eye for the theater, the courts and Paris society. During the First World War he joined the French army’s camouflage unit. Shortly before his death in Paris in 1931, he was elected to London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
About the Genre
Impressionism
The Impressionists wanted to paint modern life outdoors, in natural light. Instead of grand history scenes, they painted ordinary pleasures: picnics, boating, strolls and lazy afternoons by the river.
Forain was a friend of Degas and showed his work in four of the Impressionist exhibitions. Here he uses quick brushwork and soft, shimmering color to capture a quiet moment of leisure, just the kind of everyday scene the Impressionists made their own.
From the Goodie Letter
Art That Arrives in Your Mailbox
The Artist’s Wife Fishing was the envelope liner in September’s Goodie Letter. Each month brings new art, tucked in with a letter, a fine-art print and a few surprises.
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Image: Jean-Louis Forain, The Artist’s Wife Fishing, 1896. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1985.64.19. Open access.
