Portrait of a Woman in Green

Alice Pike Barney's pastel sketch captures a figure in fashionable 1920s attire: a luminous green cloche hat and scarf frame a woman with reddish curls and direct gaze. Barney, a Cincinnati-born painter and patron of the arts, worked primarily in portraiture and theatrical subjects. This work demonstrates her facility with color and psychological presence, rendered in soft pastels on paper—a medium favoring immediacy and spontaneity. The sitter's refined appearance and Barney's assured technique reflect the artist's connections to progressive artistic and theatrical circles of the era.