Portrait de la cousine Félicie

Portrait de la cousine Félicie by Marie Bermond, dated around 1900 and held at the Gaillac Museum of Fine Arts, is a family portrait — the sitter's relationship to the artist specified in the title — that gives this otherwise conventional female portrait a biographical dimension. Painting one's own relatives was a consistent practice among academic and Post-Impressionist painters alike: it provided a willing model, an intimate relationship that could produce a more psychologically candid result, and a personal document of family life. Bermond's portrait of her cousin Félicie preserves both a likeness and a family connection.

The portrait's intimacy — a family member as subject — seems to relax Bermond's handling slightly from the formal control she brings to public commissions. The face is painted with warm attentiveness, the brushwork in the costume and background remaining fluid and unelaborated.