Head of a Woman: Study for "The Happy Mother" (L'Heureuse mère)

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Artist: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (French, 1758–1823)
Medium: Charcoal and black and white chalk with stumping, on blue paper (now discolored)
Size: 49.8 × 39.8 cm (19 5/8 × 15 11/16 in.)
Culture: French
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

A nearly life-sized woman in antique dress gazes fondly at something held in her unfinished right arm. With her exposed breast, this ideal woman mingles dream and sensuality, anticipating Romanticism. The broad masses of light and shadow enhance the dreamlike effect.

At the height of his career, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon made this nearly life-sized drawing as a model for a painting by his mistress and professional associate, Constance Mayer. The woman in the painting, titled The Happy Mother, gazes adoringly at her nursing infant. Following the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who popularized and glorified maternity as a natural physical and emotional bond, both artists portrayed feminine tenderness.

Such emotion set Prud'hon's imagery apart from his Neoclassical contemporaries. Prud'hon preferred to draw with powdery applications of black and white chalk on blue or gray paper. Instead of using lines, he indicated contours of forms by stumping. Building up form by gradations of light created with white chalk, he explored the play of light on flesh.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.