Thérèse Louise de Sureda

Francisco Goya

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a muted, sapphire-blue gown sits ramrod straight in a chair and looks at us in this vertical portrait painting. The chair and the woman’s body face our left in profile, but she turns her round face to look at us with large, light brown eyes. She has slightly flushed cheeks, a straight nose, a full lower lip, and her mouth is closed. Her left forearm, closer to us, rests on the front corner of the wooden arm of the chair. Her other hand lies across that forearm. Her blue dress has a high collar and wraps closed across her chest. The full skirt bunches around the back of the seat and around the arm of the chair. The corners of a white collar lie open at the woman’s throat, nestled into the dress's lapels. The dress is painted rather loosely with shades of slate and royal blue and shaded with mauve pink, giving it a hint of a sheen. The back and seat of the wood chair is upholstered in gold-colored fabric, which is also loosely painted with the suggestion of a brocade pattern. The background is dark brown, nearly black.