| Remarks |
This woman may well be the beautiful gitana that Goovaerts painted during his study trip in Seville. On December 21, 1893 he writes to his teacher August Allebé: ‘I was also in Triana, where the area of the gitanas is, and I painted a head of a gitana - a very beautiful woman, truly delightfully beautiful.’ (Letter from Henri Goovaerts to August Allebé, dated December 21, 1893. Archives of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam, Noord-Hollands Archief (Haarlem), file 239). This painting is known only from two interior photographs. The first one is a photo from about 1895 of Goovaerts’ studio in Maastricht, shortly after he returned from his study trip (photo in Lily Goovaerts archive). The second one is an interior photo from about 1910 of a house belonging to the descendants of Philip Bogaert (1807-1894), the paternal friend of Henri Goovaerts who acted as an intermediary for the payments of the Rijksakademie to Henri Goovaerts during Goovaerts' study trip (photo in Regional Historic Center Limburg, archive 21.287B Bogaert). Based on the interior photos, it is plausible that Goovaerts donated the portrait to one of Philip Bogaert's children after his trip. |
