© NCG Signature/Inscription: Signed lower right: C. Pissarro 84 Place of Origin: -- Type of work: Painting Iconography: Portrait Glossary of technical terms: see Dictionary MIN 3579 Pissarro, Camille French, 1830-1903 Portrait of Nini 1884 Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 54.4 cm Pissarro painted portraits throughout his career, his sitters tending to be members of his family. This one depicts Eugénie Estruc (1863-1930), nicknamed Nini, the niece of Pissarro’s wife. Pissarro did Nini’s portrait several times, beginning with a pastel in 1877. In 1883 she again became the subject of his portraits. This resulted in a full-figure portrait in an outdoor setting (Pissarro and Venturi 1939, no.653), the portrait seen here, and a portrait without date, probably 1884 (Pissarro and Venturi 1939, no. 1391). The portrait seen here was painted during the Christmas period of 1883-4. The artist appears to have been fairly happy with the result. On 28 December 1883 he wrote to his son Lucien in London: ‘Nini is here. I have begun to paint her portrait…I show her a bit sulky beneath her fair, curly hair tied with a marvellous cherry-coloured bow and set against an intense, deep-blue background. The blue can be seen all the way to London! I struggled like hell to get it right.’ By capturing directly Nini’s character Pissarro managed to avoid the sentimentalism that he noted in contemporary portraits and which caused him to treat the genre with great circumspection. Nini also appears in some of Pissarro’s market scenes such as The Butcher ( 1883; Tate, on long-term loan to the National Gallery, London), where she modelled for the central figure. Location: Room 62 Enlarged Photo Provenance Exhibition History Shop   Luk