坐在花瓶旁的女子

This is early Degas, 1865, years before anyone called him an Impressionist. Look at how he arranged it. The flowers take the centre, a great late-summer burst of dahlias and asters, while the woman is pushed off to the right edge, one hand near her cheek, looking away as if the painter caught her mid-thought. She is probably the wife of his old schoolfriend Paul Valpincon, at whose country house in Normandy Degas loved to stay. Portraits then were meant to centre the sitter and flatter her. Degas gave the best seat to a vase of flowers and let the person drift to the margin. A pencil study of the same woman, drawn that same year, survives today at Harvard's Fogg Museum.