Portrait of Marianthi L. Charilaou, ca 1895 - 1900

Nikiforos Lytras produced certain imposing, full-body portraits of ladies of the upper-class Athenian society; these works are distinguished by their refined elegance. The lady in the white dress and the long gloves poses against a flat white background, painted in a similar way to her white dress, that is, with brushwork of a subtly changing white, mixed, according to an impressionist principle, with some yellowish ochre in the bright areas, and with a light mauve, lilac, in the dark ones. These two complementary colours make the white colour iridescent and vibrant. The only dark tones in this extraordinarily painted symphony of white are the lady’s brown hair, the lilac bouquet and the black fringes of her umbrella.