La Mousmé or La Mousmé, Sitting in a Cane Chair, Half-Figure (with a branch of oleander) 1888. Inspired by Pierre Loti's novel Madame Chrysanthème and Japanese artwork, van Gogh painted La Mousmé, a well-dressed Japanese girl. He wrote in a letter to his brother: "It took me a whole week...but I had to reserve my mental energy to do the mousmé well. A mousmé is a Japanese girl, Provençal in this case, 12 to 14 years old.” The flowering oleander, like the girl, is in the blossoming stage of life.
