Named sitters, after the Arles peak

The record dates Portrait of Madame Trabuc to 1889. The name appears in two titles in this catalogue, both dated 1889. Titles beginning portrait of number five in that year, down from twelve in 1888 — the format contracts as the catalogue moves from Arles into Saint-Remy, even though the year itself holds 116 works.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 63.7 by 48 centimetres and is held by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, one of three works there dated 1889. The measured palette reads as yellow and green.

What the sequence shows

Portraits in this catalogue are concentrated in the middle of the decade: four titles dated 1885, seven dated 1887, then the 1888 maximum, then the fall recorded above, and two dated 1890. Landscape counts move the other way. A chronological catalogue can show a format rising and falling without needing to explain either movement, and that restraint is deliberate here: who Madame Trabuc was, how the sitting came about, and whether a second version exists are not things this record establishes.