In front of a golden and crimson damask curtain, seated in an armchair with more than half of her body, the sitter poses with her hands crossed in her lap. He wears a simple closed black suit, richly trimmed on the shoulders and sleeves with black trimmings and antique embroidery and jet beads. Her clothing is finished off with a white collar and cuffs that contrast with the predominant black and, in the case of the collar, highlight the model's face. Casado, under the warm and atmospheric lighting of the portrait, masterfully transmits the ductile play of light on the black velvet of the dress and barely highlights a few secondary details, such as the lady's earrings and rings or the decoration of her seat, through small touches of light. The attractive verismo of the hands is the result of casado's stylistic maturity, achieved during his stay in france. The white lighting contrasted with the black dress also reflects the weight that the realism of the second french empire exerted on the master. However, the treatment of the face, with a firm but gently modeled drawing and perhaps somewhat idealized, reveals a certain purist character that the artist would not discard until some years later. It is the first known portrait of the painter from palencia and stands out for the sobriety of its conception, which did not have much continuity in his later female portraits, all of them somewhat more decorative and in some cases close to the fortunism prevailing between 1870 and 1890. However, the interest in capturing the character and the relativization of the background, which can already be seen in this work, will be widely developed throughout his career, especially in the male portraits, in which with these resources underlines the personality of its models, as happens with that of práxedes mateo sagasta (madrid, congress of deputies), from 1884. Thus, the portrait of a french lady was made in paris while he was preparing the great composition that would definitively consecrate him as one of the great history painters of the 19th century, the surrender of bailén (p4265), and can be considered the best example of the influence of french portrait models on the production of married. The work proposes a relationship between the figure and the viewer that is different from the spanish customs of that time, who looks in an open and direct way in front of him from a very close, almost intimate plane. Furthermore, that same french experience was what induced casado to approach velazquez realism in this work from the interpretation that was made of his art in the capital of the neighboring country. (text extracted from g. Navarro, c. In: the spanish portrait in the prado. From goya to sorolla, museo nacional del prado, 2007, p. 148). Object Type: painting. Genre: portrait. Date: 1864. Dimensions: height: 130.5 cm (51.3 in); width: 98 cm (38.5 in). Medium: oil on canvas. Collection: Museo del Prado. Retrato de una dama francesa, por Casado del Alisal
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