Corchon y Diaque (1853-1925)
Woman in a Wine-Red Silk Cap
Oil on wood panel

Inscribed and signed in ink upper right, a dedication to N. Borniche. 13 ¾ x 9 inches (35 x 23 cm), the frame 16 x 11 inches (41 x 28 cm). Carved giltwood frame. Good condition, a vertical line of loss through the cap.

The cap sits high on the head, its edge cutting straight across the hair, and it is the only color in the panel. Everything else is grey, black, or the flesh of a face turned down and away.

She is shown in three quarter profile, looking down and to her left, the coil of hair falling behind the neck to the shoulder. A frilled white front rises to the throat inside a black jacket, laid on in thick white that stands proud of the surface. The flesh is built in fine crossed strokes of a dry brush, the color of the cheek dropped in over them rather than blended, and the mouth is a single stroke of red. Only the silk and the white front carry any real body of paint. Elsewhere it is thin enough that the grain of the wood reads through the grey ground, and the dedication is written in ink across that grey, above the cap.