Portrait of a Woman, called Madame Georges Hartmann

In 1874 Georges Hartmann was one of the busiest men in Parisian music. He was the publisher of Massenet and Bizet, and the year before he had helped the conductor Édouard Colonne launch a new series of orchestral concerts at the Odéon theatre, the beginning of what became the Concerts Colonne. That makes the piano behind this woman in a black dress more than furniture. She has long been identified as Hartmann's wife, and the French national catalogue still hedges, calling it a portrait of a woman said to be Madame Hartmann. The canvas is 183 centimetres tall, so she stands at life size, holding a fan. The painting was still Hartmann's when he died in 1900. Two years later his executor, a general named Bourjat, gave it to the French state through the dealer Durand-Ruel.