Alice Pike Barney, born Cincinnati, OH - La Cigale - 1900 - T-Shirt

A woman turns her head over one bare shoulder and meets the viewer with a steady, sidelong gaze, her hair crowned with leaves against a field of green.

Visual Elements & Composition

The vertical portrait is dominated by leaf green, which fills most of the picture and wraps the figure in summer foliage. Pale flesh tones, softened into that green, carry the skin of the shoulder and face. Dark olive sets the depths of the background, and burnt auburn picks out the tousled hair gathered at the side and the reddish-gold leaf ornaments within it. A dark curved form at the lower left, reading as either a stringed instrument or a fold of drapery, anchors the bottom of the composition. Slate blue appears only in small accents. The handling is loose and feathery, built from layered, broken marks rather than hard outlines.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title La Cigale names the cicada, the insect of La Fontaine's fable in which the singing cicada runs out of provisions when winter arrives, a contrast between carefree art and industrious prudence. The greenery, the leaves in the hair and the self-possessed glance carry that association into the image, presenting a figure who lives for the moment and for song. The work rests on this literary type rather than on a single narrative scene. It was made in 1900 by Alice Pike Barney (1857–1931), an American painter born in Cincinnati, Ohio, who worked in Washington, D.C., where her studio and salon drew artists, writers and musicians. Her figure studies favour soft, atmospheric handling over hard outline, and this sheet belongs to that tonal, expressive tradition.

On the T-Shirt

A tee carries this portrait across the chest, where the figure's gaze meets whoever is wearing it at eye level. The soft green field and the turned head read as a single, unbroken image, so the design holds its mood from every angle of the wearer's body. Its summery palette suits the warmer months the fable itself describes.