Le Chapeau de Paille
"Portrait of Susanna Lunden" or "The Straw Hat" Le chapeau de paille (probably 1622-5) is a painting by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).
- Blue skies, primarily composed with the pigments lead white and smalt fill the background.
- Susanna Lunden (1599-1643), the probable subject of this portrait, was Rubens's sister-in-law. She was the daughter of an Antwerp silk and tapestry merchant for whom Rubens designed. Rubens married her younger sister Hélène in 1630.
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat
In 1782 Madame Vigee Le Brun accompanied her husband upon a business trip into Belgium and Holland. She wrote enthusiastically of all the art in those countries, and was so struck by the beauty of Le chapeau de paille, then in Antwerp, that she at once painted a portrait of herself in a similar style. The picture, which, like its prototype, is now in the National Gallery, London, added considerably to her reputation, and was the occasion, upon her return to Paris, of her being proposed by Joseph Verner as a member of the Royal Academy of Painting.
The Acceptance World
The look and style of Jean Templar reminds the book's narrator Nicholas Jenkins of Le Chapeau de Paille in the "The Acceptance World" by Anthony Powell.
