A Nude Woman Doing Her Hair Before a Mirror (often only Woman in Front of a Mirror or with the old title A nude seen from the back, woman doing her hair before a mirror) is an oil painting from 1841 by the Danish Golden Age painter CW Eckersberg. The painting is in the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen. The relatively small image is regarded as one of the Danish Golden Age masterpieces.
The painting shows a woman with her back turned, with bare torso by an oval mirror, that reflects her face and the top of her chest. Her left hand rests on a green dressing table in the image left. On the table you also see a box with an open lid. With her right hand she has lifted and taken to the brown hair that is tightly put up with center parting and chignon. Her big red left earlobe has a gold glistening earring. her right earring is also seen, not in the mirror, and hairstyle are also different in the mirror. The head is turned slightly to the left and sunk.
The woman's lower body is draped with a white cloth, which is well down her buttocks. Her right leg seems to be slightly bent upward in contrapposto.
The woman is located offset to the left relative to the center line of the image, whereas the mirror is on the right. The oval mirror with the wooden frame mirrors so as to face viewed approximately in the middle of the mirror. The mirror has a size so that only the top portion of the woman's breasts seen. The woman raised his right arm covers parts of the mirror image so you can not see the bottom part of the face. In the mirror image is also seen that women do not consider themselves in the mirror, but the gaze directed downward to the left. There is no eye contact with the viewer.
The wall where the mirror hangs is plain, however, with some text. In the left of the picture is an oblique shadow on the wall and down the left wall. On the bottom right is a panel at the height of her thighs. In the reflection you see a closed door.
The picture is not particularly large, only 33.5 × 26 centimeters.
Eckersberg was a professor at the art academy and had in 1833 he introduced that students could paint for female nudes. Eckersberg painted together with his students, and painting with the woman comes from a session in late summer 1841. The model's name was Florentine and she stood model for over a month that summer. The position she occupies in Ecker's painting, drawing and painting, he and the students after the period from 9 August to 16 September. Two of the students' paintings are known. This is one of Ludvig August Smith and Sally Henriques. The composition of their paintings are similare. Henriques painted her back more s-shaped, and there are differences in how the face is covered by the right arm and the angle at which the arm is held. The color scheme also seems to be different. The woman's back in Ludvig August Smiths painting has an attitude there is more follow Eckersberg than Henriques. Unlike Eckersberg, Smith painted the woman roughly in the middle of the imag. In Ecker's painting the mirror image assumes a greater weight. From the angles of the images can conclude that Eckersberg has reserved the best seat for himself while Smith has stood by Ecker's right, Henriques far right.
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