I get the sense that this painting has a sweet mysterious story behind it, but I should let the future owner to write it! Perhaps it''s all about the umbrella? Indoors, closed, and placed next to a delicate glass of dried flowers creates a narrative of ''returning home'' or finding sanctuary. What is striking about the painting is that, without a person in sight, it is the ''portrait'' of a presence. The objects suggest someone has just stepped away; it’s an intimate glimpse into a private, and very feminine world.As a woman artist working in the mid-20th century, Gilberte Schmitt (1907-2001) was part of a tradition that reclaimed the ''domestic'' as a space of high art and complex emotion.Originally from Bordeaux, she came to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in the 1930s. She exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon of Women Painters and Sculptors. In the 1950s, paintings and drawings by Gilberte were ac...