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Woman on Sofa
Accession # 63.148.1
Artist Guy Pène du Bois
Title Woman on Sofa
Date ca. 1922-1927
Medium Oil on panel
Dimensions 26 x 31 in. (66 x 78.7 cm) frame: 25 3/4 × 30 1/2 × 3 1/4 in. (65.4 × 77.5 × 8.3 cm)
Signed Signed and dated lower left: Guy Pene du Bois 27
Credit Line Gift of Chester Dale
Location Visible Storage: Case 16, Screen B (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: The modish hairstyle, form-fitting dress, and brazenly casual pose help to identify this sitter as a flapper—the name given to liberated young American women during the Roaring Twenties.

Guy Pène du Bois is said to have found his inspiration for this painting in the work of another chronicler of the era, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The writer’s 1922 short story “Gretchen’s Forty Winks” featured the character Gretchen Halsey, “a bright-colored, Titian-haired girl, vivid as a French rag doll.”