Brooklyn Museum: American Art: Woman on Sofa

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Woman on Sofa

The modish hairstyle, form-fitting dress, and aggressively casual pose help to identify this sitter as a flapper--the name given to liberated young American women during the Roaring Twenties. Guy Pène du Bois is said to have found his inspiration for this painting in the work of another chronicler of the era, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose 1922 short story "Gretchen's Forty Winks" featured the character Gretchen Halsey, "a bright-colored, Titian-haired girl, vivid as a French rag doll."

Artist: Guy Pène du Bois, American, 1884-1958
Medium: Oil on panel
Dates: 1927
Dimensions: 26 x 31 in. (66 x 78.7 cm)
Collections: American Art
Museum Location: This item is not on view
Accession Number: 63.148.1
Credit Line: Gift of Chester Dale
Image: Overall, 63.148.1_transp5690.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph