On the Terrace at Sèvres is an 1880 open-air Impressionist oil painting by French artist Marie Bracquemond.
Here in this work, we can see the beginnings of an Impressionistic concern with shifting light and forms, especially in the background trees and dwellings. The three figures display a silent and subtle array of absorption (the man and woman on the right) and vigilance on the part of the woman on the left who looks to us. Their poses are studied and would suggest they are sitting for the artist.
Described by the critic Henri Focillon as one of the “three great ladies” of Impressionist art, Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916) actually only developed an Impressionist style by 1890. Beforehand, she studied with the famous Neoclassicist painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in whose studio she was regarded as the most intelligent of his pupils.
Marie Bracquemond’s On the Terrace at Sèvres is in the Musée du Petit Palais in Geneva, Switzerland.