Jeanne JACQUEMIN (1863-1938) Woman with crown Pastel on laid paper Size: 57 x 33.5 cm Signed lower left It is likely that our pastel is the one exhibited in 1893 at Le Barc de Boutteville during the 5th exhibition of Impressionist and Symbolist painters from 25 October to 5 November 1893 under the title "The Crown of Sorrow". Jeanne Jacquemin's use of pastels is recurrent in her work, which is very rare on the market. Her participation in various exhibitions (at Le Barc de Boutteville from 1892 to 1900, at the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1889, and at the Salon des XX in Brussels in 1893) records only 46 works (at least two of which were exhibited several times). If we add the 14 later paintings exhibited at the Dijon Salon between 1902 and 1938, the corpus of works listed seems to be limited to around sixty. Jeanne Jacquemin has the status of a mythical artist, adulated by her artist friends, but knowledge of her work is still a work in progress and should be, so much so that the pastel we are presenting today is imbued with all the hallmarks of symbolism. Here, as in most known pastels, is a self-portrait in which the artist depicts herself in close-up, mid-body, against a background of an indefinite dreamlike landscape, the colour of the sky announcing the finiteness of the day, a Christ-like crown of thorns floating around her head. The light blue eyes are framed by shadows, and the face is inexpressive, as if frozen in an aloof expression. The long, loose blond hair brushes against the iris flower held in her hands off-camera. A few diagonal lines running from top to bottom could evoke a transparent veil, adding to the poetic mystery of this work. Two small old tears without loss of support in the lower right near the edge. The laid paper is not fully glued to the cardboard of the old frame.