Alice Pike Barney, born Cincinnati, OH - Model in Yellows - 1915 - T-Shirt

A seated woman turns her head in profile, lit in hot yellows and orange against a plain grey sheet, in this 1915 pastel study by Alice Pike Barney.

Visual Elements & Composition

The figure faces right with her head slightly bowed, and her dark hair is gathered high at the crown with a dark ornament. Her face is touched with pale yellow and rose. The bodice is white and yellow, cinched by a blue and green sash, and a long, full skirt in warm orange and gold falls in loose, layered folds to the lower edge. The paper is a mid-grey, and much of the ground is left open, so the sketched contours and colour passages stand out clearly. A handwritten annotation in the left margin marks the sheet as a working study.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title places the sitter in the role of a studio model posed in a range of warm yellows, and the picture is as much about colour as it is about her. The contrast of hot yellows against the cool, neutral ground carries the work. The bowed head and the drape of the skirt give the pose a sense of rest. Alice Pike Barney, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was an American painter known for her pastel portraits and figure studies. This sheet reflects her practice of quick, expressive figure drawings on toned paper, used to explore colour and gesture, and it belongs to the working studies she made during the 1910s alongside her more finished portraits.

Wearing the Study

Across the chest, the composition reads at a glance: a single figure, a warm palette, and a quiet grey field. The yellow bodice and orange skirt sit close to the body, so the colour passages shift as you move. The grey ground around the figure gives the eye room to rest, the same way the open paper does in the original.