Fantine

Fantine, a character in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables honourable mention from the Société des Femmes Peintres.The painting depicts the full-face portrait of a seated woman with strong highlights, in front of a dark background. The woman looks forward with a sad, wistful expression. In front of her is a cot containing a sleeping baby and an empty feeding bottle, with a doll in a red dress lying on the floor. The painting represents an episode in the early chapters of Les Misérables. Fantine, having fallen in love, had been made pregnant, and then abandoned. This occurred in Paris during a period following the French Revolution. The baby was later nicknamed Cosette. The painting demonstrates the sorrow and poverty of an abandoned single mother in post-Revolutionary France.