A sitter recorded twice

The record dates Portrait of Patience Escalier, Shepherd in Provence to 1888. The name appears in two titles in this catalogue, both dated 1888, which puts this entry inside the small group of sitters the record identifies more than once. Of the thirty titles that begin portrait of, twelve carry the Arles year.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 64 by 54 centimetres and is held by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, which holds three works in this catalogue, dated 1885, 1888 and 1889. The measured palette reads as blue and green.

Blue at its maximum

Blue dominates twenty-six of the 135 works dated 1888 — the highest count for that family in any year of the decade, and more than double the seven of 1887. It falls to twelve in 1889 and ten in 1890. So the Arles year is the blue year in this catalogue as much as it is the yellow one, which is not how the period is usually summarised. The measurement is of the catalogue image; the trade named in the title is the record's, and nothing further about the man is asserted here.