The Countess Von Schonfeld and Her Daughter

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The work of art chosen to be analyzed is a portrait by Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun entitled The Countess Von Schönfeld And Her Daughter. The artwork is oil on canvas art painted in 1973. It is a painting of a woman and her daughter. Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun’s main focus of the portrait is visibly the mother and her daughter displayed in the portrait. The subjects are placed in the center to emphasize the figures and the pair is set in the foreground. The bodies are positioned to form almost a singular figure to create the largest visual aspect of the painting. The composition of the painting is very compact to draw focus on the large forms in the foreground. Relative to the canvas, the subjects fill up a majority of the frame, again, to emphasize the countess and her daughter. The colors used in the painting are very warm and earthy. The mother is in a beautiful red dress that drapes nicely and has a green head-wrap that cascades along the side of her body to her thigh. The daughter, about 5 or 6 years of age, is wearing a light, flowing white dress. The woman has reddish-brown hair, pale skin, and rosy cheeks. The daughter is just the same, but her big, bluish eyes really accentuate her youthfulness. The colors all work together to unify the painting. The artist creates a background of earth-tones to highlight the golden-red of the woman’s dress and the white of the daughter’s dress pops against the red drawing focus to the young subject. Light is very present in the artwork. The brightness of the painting brings the viewer’s gaze to the pale-skinned woman and her child and really highlights the features in their face, such as their rosy cheeks. It displays a light and feminine look and comes off as somewhat angelic with their fair skin. With the light focused on the face, the viewer notices the ever so slight smile present in the subjects, which brings
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