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Terms and conditions of use
Young girl, Étaples
(c. 1892)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
(105.5 × 59.5 cm)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, Professor Graham Peirson and Christine Peirson and the Norma Atwell Bequest, 2020
Gallery location
Gallery 7
Level 2, NGV Australia
About this work
Iso (Isobel) Rae has captured a moment from everyday life in this image of a young girl in a traditional Breton cap and holding a flower. Unusually for Rae, the girl is depicted on a monumental scale. The light-filled, prismatic palette adopted here was used by many artists in the later nineteenth century, and the humble, everyday subject aligns the work with naturalist artists such as Jules Bastien-Lepage. Rae studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne from 1878 to 1887 before travelling to France in the late 1880s. She studied in Paris, and in 1892, moved to Étaples, a fishing village on the northern coast of France, where she lived for the next forty years.