Octave Guenard (1845-1934), Woman in a Park, Signed Oil on Canvas, 19th Century, Framed

A woman sits alone on the grass at the edge of a park, in a full black dress and a wide cream hat trimmed with feathers, her head bent over her hands. She is knitting, and a ball of red wool hangs below the needles, the single note of colour in the picture. A closed black umbrella lies in the grass to her right. Behind her the ground rises into dense trees and shrubs painted in short broken strokes of green, and to the left a clearing opens onto pale grass and a strip of sky. The light comes through the canopy and falls unevenly across the grass and the shoulders of her dress. She is small within the setting, and the painter has given as much attention to the foliage around her as to the figure.

Octave Guenard (1845-1934) was a French painter born in Paris. He was a member of the Societe des Artistes Francais from 1890 and worked on figure subjects and outdoor scenes in the Impressionist manner. The reverse of this canvas bears a handwritten inscription identifying him, which reads "Octave Guenard Peintre ne a Paris au 19e, Ecole Francaise, societaire des Artistes Francais depuis 1890".

The canvas carries a fine network of cracks, slight wear to the paint layer and a small hole at the lower centre, visible in the photographs. It is signed at the lower right and presented in a carved and gilded frame with a linen slip.