Sitting Woman in Simultaneous Contrast

In 1824 the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul took charge of the dyes at the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris. Some of the expensive yarns were said to look dull. He found nothing wrong with the dyes themselves. What changed them was the colour placed next to them, and in 1839 he published his law of simultaneous contrast, which says that each colour tints its neighbour with its own complementary.

Hölzel's title names that effect outright. Around 1908 he seated a woman in a pale, greenish dress against a dark wall, with flat shapes of strong green standing behind her almost like cut paper, and small patches of blue near her side. Along her shoulders, arms and hands runs a thin line of red-orange, the complementary of all that green. The canvas is unsigned, and the Belvedere dates it only approximately.