Looking Paper

In The Countess Von Schonfeld with Her Daughter, Elisabeth Louise Vigee- Lebrun used size and placement to emphasize the figures of the mother and the young daughter. Elisabeth set the pair in the foreground, and she posed them so that their visual weights combined to form a single mass, the largest form in the painting. Strongly contrasting values of light skin against a pale background add further emphasis. Within this emphasis area, Elizabeth uses color of sight to create a focal point on the little girls white dress and the mothers dress.

Elisabeth has subordinated the background so that it does not interfere, blurring the detail and working in a narrow range of light values. The painting is oil on canvas art piece painted in 1973. It is a painting of a women holding her daughter on her lap, the women being “The Grafin von Schonfeld. ” The woman is dressed in this beautiful red dress from the upper class or a royalty stature in the late 1700’s. The clothing looks rich green with red.

She has a covering on her head that looks like an extravagant scarf that drapes over her shoulder on one side, also made of the dame silky material used for her dress. The woman has pale skin, reddish brown hair, bluish eyes, and rosy cheeks. Her eyes look very real and penetrating when you examine the painting. The daughter is about the age of 5 or 6 years old. Her arms are around her mother’s neck and legs draped across her mother’s lap.

The daughter is wearing a white fluid dress that looks thin in material with red sash around her midsection. The daughter has the same reddish brown hair and rosy cheeks. The mothers and daughters eyes are equally as big n size, while the child’s eyes seem also very real and youthful. The women and daughter are sitting on a bench of some sort on a ledge of a window open. Outside the window there is landscaping of mountains, trees and stormy sky. The sky is rich with high value of grays including the whites of the clouds.