Canadian Impressionist pastel painting by Gertrude Des Clayes (1879-1949), depicting a charming bust length portrait of a young child who’s sparkling brown eyes gaze directly at the viewer. The youth’s brown hair is fashionably tousled matching the casual attire of a comfortable white shirt under a brown sweater.
Children were a primary subject for Des Clayes, wherein sentimentalization was carefully avoided focusing instead on the subject’s freshness, intelligence and energy. Extremely proficient in the use of pastels, the most important of Des Clayes works being in this medium, they allowed flexibility of colour, texture, and expression. The very choice of the pastel as a medium points to Mary Cassatt, and Degas, as does the free treatment of the application, which discloses the sketchy “brushwork”.
