Lella, 1947, Edouard Boubat

One of my favorite examples of portraiture would have to be Edouard Boubat’s stunning Lella, Bretagne, 1947… here we are presented with a real person, one who has been captured in two dimensions yet leaps off of the paper and right into our world, a living, breathing woman… she is both unique and intimate (we know this woman), yet at the same time she is iconic and archetypal and timeless… she is strong, she is determined, she is a modern-day Jeanne d’Arc heading into battle - and yet she is vulnerable, emotional… she is a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and it is achingly apparent that she is to Boubat as Jane Morris was to Rossetti.