1889, the fourth period

The record dates Portrait of Dr. Felix Rey to 1889. In the chronology this site uses, that year is assigned whole to Saint-Rémy, on the stated ground that the record gives years rather than months and that a calendar year cannot be split between two towns without listing a work twice. Where a canvas dated 1889 was actually painted is not settled by this catalogue, and this entry does not settle it.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 64 by 53 centimetres and is held by the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, one of five entries here in that collection, dated 1888, 1889 and 1890. The measured palette reads as yellow.

Portraits in the fourth period

Nine titles dated 1889 contain the word portrait, against fifteen in 1888 and two in 1890. The count falls steadily across the last three years of the decade while the total output stays high — 135 works in 1888, 116 in 1889, eighty-four in 1890 — so the fall is in the share of portraits, not in the volume of work. That is an observation about the distribution of titles in this catalogue. The record names the sitter and gives nothing else about him, and nothing else is offered here.