In this painting, the umbrella is folded, not opened. This seems to be a much rarer image--especially for one where the woman is holding the umbrella.
According to Martin Newman in the Mirror, In "Woman with Umbrella" (1964) [part of a series of paintings from press photos of John F. Kennedy’s assassination], Richter "consciously presents Jacqueline Kennedy as an anonymous woman in the street. Her face concealed by her hand conveys a horror amplified by the razor like horizontal paint strokes. But the portrait is not recognisably Jackie and the meaning of this moment is taken out of its real setting, to deliberately stymie any reading of it."
Richard Bonnet's take in the Telegraph on the painting:"In one hand [Kennedy] carries an umbrella, with the other she covers her mouth, as though to stop herself from crying out. By using feathery brushstrokes to blur the original image, Richter allows us to imagine that rain has blurred the camera lens, or else that we are looking at the photograph through our own tears. By giving the painting a neutral title, Woman with an Umbrella, Richter turns a real woman photographed at a certain moment in her life into a universal image of insupportable grief."
At the National Portrait Gallery until May 31.
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