Oil Painting On Canvas Depicting A Female Figure

Oil painting on canvas depicting a female figure, made by Auguste Toulmouche (Nantes 21 September 1829 - Paris 16 October 1890).

Toulmouche, attracted by the realist current, managed to blend academicism and realism in his paintings and specialized in full-length female portraits of elegantly dressed beautiful women, caught in romantic attitudes, often sentimental or naively mischievous. But without ever forgetting to enrich his characters with a lively expressiveness. Merit, this, which at the beginning was not fully recognized.

Toulmouche is therefore known in the History of Art as the painter of the Parisian, and it is no coincidence that Émile Zola writes of the «delicious dolls of Toulmouche».

His painting was immediately successful: he was struck by the elegance of the clothes and poses, but also by the lively and spontaneous "character" that he knew how to give to his models. Girl (1852) was bought by Napoleon III, The First Step (1853) by the Empress Eugenie, and Afternoon by Princess Mathilde.