Portrait of Mademoiselle Chanel

portrait created in 1923 by French avant-garde artist Marie Laurencin of fashion designer Coco Chanel. The painting, though stylized and languorous, nonetheless captures Chanel’s features.

In the early 1920s Serge Diaghilev hired Laurencin to design sets for the Ballets Russes production of composer Francis Poulenc’s ballet Les Biches. At the same time Chanel was designing costumes for the company’s Le Train Bleu. The two women liked each other, and Chanel asked the artist to paint her portrait.

Here, the couturier sits in a dreamy daze with a small dog in her lap. To the right, a larger dog leaps after a dove that dives toward the sitter. Chanel is shown with one shoulder of her draped gown falling off her arm and exposing her chest. The soft, curving, fluid lines, smoky colors, and languid mood are typical of Laurencin’s work. However, Chanel decided that the portrait did not look sufficiently like her and rejected it.