A Peasant Woman

Leibl belonged to an international movement that found the last bastion of integrity in peasant life. This group included Courbet, whom Leibl met in Munich in 1859. Later Leibl came to know many other French painters, mostly members of the Barbizon school, whom the artist encountered in Paris in 1870.

At his best, Leibl possessed an austere and impressive talent. His peasant subjects were often posed for by the artists’s relatives. The head of a peasant woman shows an almost Degas-like sharpness of focus and lack of sentimentality with an impressive combination of clear-eyed objectivity and innate elegance.