A fashionable woman with a parasol staring into some distance—quite a banal work. Unless, you only know who the artist is.
This is one of Édouard Manet’s last works, titled Le Printemps, or the Spring. The woman is modeled after Jeanne, a well known actress of 1880s Paris.
As you’ve guessed, it’s unlike any of Manet’s characteristic works. His oeuvre mostly consists of drinkers, broke singers, courtesans, and barmaids.
Then-current theory was that depicting lower-class people in art is degenerative. Manet strongly opposed this. Two of his most famous paintings “Déjeuner” and “Olympia” are as relevant as they were more than a century ago—maybe in a modern way.
However, the above one is much different in subject matter: a Parisienne lost in thought, walking in a garden. She is aware of your admiring gaze, though.
Manet’s thin floral brushworks on her face and the broad, and his sketch-like strokes in the lush foliages and blue sky behind is pretty amazing, too.
Wikipedia insinuates that it was at his friend’s suggestion to paint a series of seasons personified by contemporary ideals of women, fashion and beauty. Spring was the first installment of that series.
Sadly, Manet will never be able to finish it. He died just a year later.
Also read: The Scream by Edvard Munch