The lovely portrait of La Mousmé, Sitting (F 431, JH 1519)--a girl in a red and blue dress is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. I love this painting and have visited it several times. I have a small framed print hanging in my home. My question is regarding her hands. Both appear somewhat elongated--the right hand more than the left. But the left hand appears almost withered--deformed, somehow. Does anyone know the story behind this?
Regarding the La Mousmé question of hands: yesterday did some research on Pierre Loti aka Julien Viaud, as I discovered. Apparently he was an artist as well and did find a few of his art photos and paintings or sketches....some of the web pages were totally in French, but I did manage to get the gist of what they had to say...as a surmise, I am guessing that he and Gauguin may have crossed paths in Polynesia....it is said that the operas Lakmé and Madame Butterfly were based on his books (Butterfly aka "Madame Chrysanthème"). Webster's Second edition also gives "a tea girl" under the definition of mousmé....am still checking out that idea...
Today I did a search on "Oleanders" on your site and found 2 paintings F 0594 Still Life: Vase with Oleanders (Whereabouts unknown: possibly stolen in 1944) and F 0593 Still Life: Vase with Oleanders and Books. Both painting were done in August, 1888....probably less than a month after La Mousmé....maybe he had Oleanders on the brain, since she was holding a sprig of Oleander....further I opened both pictures together...La Mousme, and Oleanders and Books. Upon comparison, I found that the center sprig in the Books picture remarkable resembled the shape of the held sprig.......then low and behold...maybe I have an over-active imagination, but following the shape of the sprig to the right portion of the vase I found a correspondence to La Mousmé's "disturbing" arm and hand....I did a reverse color on La Mousmé....and it seemed to be even clearer....and also the ring on that hand show up quite clearly....
As an aside....all parts of the Oleander are EXTREMELY poisonous...Van Gogh speaks of illness in his letter to Theo....methinks that perhaps he cut too much oleander? I am fairly certain that if someone had me sitting, holding an oleander spring in MY hand, I would certainly ask for my money and never come back to pose for such an idiot!!!! Perhaps, Vincent was HOPING that she would surely come back, all the while PRAYING that he had not inadvertently KILLED her for art's sake...he did call attention to the oleanders she was holding several times in several letters, (I have not read those references, just have seen them referred to in several places...would like to read them though.)
Another interesting aside, though perhaps of no consequence, Microsoft Encarta mentions that oleander was usually used to make rat poison....rat...mouse....a sort of pun in English, perhaps...don't know what those words would be in French or Dutch.....
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