#domestic

Apparently he painted a whole string of these — a woman, a window, light coming through — enough of them that people talk about it as a series. It's named after the china rather than the person, which tells you something about where he was looking.

The woman reading is Madame Hessel — according to what I've read, she was his art dealer's wife and one of his closest friends, and he painted her over and over for something like forty years. This is her on holiday at a house by the Normandy coast.

This is a home scene rather than a commission, as far as I can tell — a painter putting her own household on canvas. Beyond that I came up short. I couldn't find who the two students were or what the lesson was supposed to be. If anyone knows the rest of it, I'd love the story.