Portrait of Madeleine Castaing

By the end of the 1920s Madeleine Castaing and her husband Marcellin, an art critic, had become two of Soutine's most important patrons. They had first met him in Montparnasse around 1920, bought his pictures steadily in the years after, and from 1930 he spent summers at their country house at Lèves, near Chartres. This portrait was painted around 1929 in his Paris studio, over six sittings, and according to the Metropolitan Museum she did not enjoy them. The signs are there in the paint. Her hands are knotted over one knee, her legs are set at an awkward angle, and the face above the black fur collar is tight and impatient. She was in her mid-30s then. Her reputation as one of the great Paris decorators, with her shop on the rue Jacob, was still ahead of her.