New Web objects Portrait

Thomas Sully

Date: 1839

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund

Object number: 2000.2

Text Entries: Roughly contemporary, these two portraits each depict a member of the artist's family. Jonathan Adams Bartlett's "likeness" of his sister, Harriet, is exceptional in its inclusion of books-both in her hand and stacked on the table-a nod to the intellectual realm most associated with men. Though fashionably rouged and coifed, Harriet is nevertheless portrayed as actively seeking knowledge: her over-the-shoulder look at the viewer seems to indicate an interruption of activity-a moment captured-additionally emphasized by the tassel caught in mid-swing behind her. Likewise, Thomas Sully portrays his daughter Blanch with a fashionable hairstyle and headdress, which serve in effect to "crown" her head. Sully executed this canvas soon after returning home from painting the commissioned portrait of the young Queen Victoria. Interestingly, the twenty-one year old Blanch accompanied her father to London and often modeled in the queen's stead between sessions. The painting of Blanch serves as a visual poem to her intelligence, beauty and charm. Like Bartlett, Sully relied on visual symbols to convey an inner truth of individual character.

Jonathan Adams Bartlett

Date: c. 1840

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.14

Text Entries: Roughly contemporary, these two portraits each depict a member of the artist's family. Jonathan Adams Bartlett's "likeness" of his sister, Harriet, is exceptional in its inclusion of books-both in her hand and stacked on the table-a nod to the intellectual realm most associated with men. Though fashionably rouged and coifed, Harriet is nevertheless portrayed as actively seeking knowledge: her over-the-shoulder look at the viewer seems to indicate an interruption of activity-a moment captured-additionally emphasized by the tassel caught in mid-swing behind her. Likewise, Thomas Sully portrays his daughter Blanch with a fashionable hairstyle and headdress, which serve in effect to "crown" her head. Sully executed this canvas soon after returning home from painting the commissioned portrait of the young Queen Victoria. Interestingly, the twenty-one year old Blanch accompanied her father to London and often modeled in the queen's stead between sessions. The painting of Blanch serves as a visual poem to her intelligence, beauty and charm. Like Bartlett, Sully relied on visual symbols to convey an inner truth of individual character.

Joseph Whiting Stock

Date: 1842

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.132

Text Entries: Joseph Whiting Stock, the prolific itinerant New England painter, traveled in the region using a special wheelchair since an early childhood accident left him crippled. Stock learned to paint primarily through art manuals and became best known for his full-length portraits of children. His journals indicate that he earned an income of $6000 for 913 works of art, an exceptional amount for this period. Stock painted Captain J. L. Gardner's Son at Age 2- ½ during a sixteen-week stay in Bristol, Rhode Island where, according to Stock, "business was very dull." This fine portrait demonstrates Stock's style of heavily modeled facial features with parted lips and large eyes and lavish environment emphasized here by the deep red drapery, patterned carpet and fine furniture.

William Matthew Prior

Date: 1848

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.122

Text Entries: William Matthew Prior, artist and entrepreneur from Bath, Maine, intentionally painted in a flattened style. He advertised in the 1831 Maine Inquirer: "Persons wishing for a flat picture can have a likeness without shade or shadow at one quarter price." Noted for his versatility of style, Prior succeeded in obtaining numerous commissions for flat pictures due to their affordability and quick execution. Mary Cary and Susan Elizabeth Johnson from Provincetown, Massachusetts are painted in Prior's "flat" style. Broad, confident brushwork, lively surface pattern of the dresses as well as the encircling position of the girls' arms reveal his expert understanding of paint, design and composition. In addition to capturing the physical resemblance of the two girls, Prior used conventions to suggest a close familial relationship, such as the shared book, matching costumes and their proximity to one another.

Henry Walton

Date: c. 1850

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.140

Text Entries: Henry Walton earned his living by painting portraits, primarily watercolors, although he is most famous for his 1836-1850 lithographs of New York townscapes. Walton, born in New York, made his way to California in 1851 with a gold rush party, but left for the Midwest in 1857 to settle in Michigan. This itinerant artist masterfully rendered forms, color and texture with convincing realism-indicative of the wide variety of styles regarded as American folk art. Walton's attention to specificity and detail was a result of his concerted effort to master technique through practice both as a painter and printmaker.

William S. Jewett

Date: 1850

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.79

Text Entries: William S. Jewett, the first artist established in California, depicted pioneer, artist, and naturalist Andrew Jackson Grayson with his family at the moment they first caught sight of the Sacramento valley. Posing the figures as a holy family, Jewett also likened the California landscape to the Promised Land, a metaphor for westward expansion.

William Matthew Prior

Date: by 1856

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.123

Text Entries: Brothers-in-law and portrait painters, William Matthew Prior and Sturtevant J. Hamblin lived together with their families in Boston by 1841. Many portraits have been attributed to both artists because they worked in a generally similar style and in close association in their shared workshop. Artists depicted toys to distinguish the gender of the child since boys and girls often wore the same style of clothes. Usually toys included in portraits of boys were associated with the world of adult males, for example, whips, wagons, or bow and arrows as shown in this portrait. Popularity of manufactured and handmade toys increased in the mid-nineteenth century reflecting the acceptance of child's play-previously considered idle activity.

George P. A. Healy

Date: 1865

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Estabrook

Object number: C1983.5

Text Entries: Lévy, Sophie, et al. <i>Twarze Ameryki: Portrety z kolekcji Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940/Faces of America: Portraits from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940</i>. (exh. cat. International Cultural Center). Cracow, Poland: International Cultural Center, 2006. Text p. 70; ill. p. 70 (color).<br><br> <i>Re: Chicago</i>. (exh. cat. DePaul Art Museum). Chicago, Illinois: DePaul University, 2011. Text, p. 60, ill. fig. 21 (color).

William Merritt Chase

Date: c. 1885

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.26

Text Entries: An accomplished portraitist, Chase depicts the young model woman posed for action: dressed for an outdoor excursion with one foot forward she stands on the brink of movement. Her fashionable attire bespeaks her social standing yet Chase opts not to include any additional "props." Set against a monochromatic background and barely casting a shadow, she stares out from the canvas with a self-assured directness and an expression of intelligence. A captured moment before posed inactivity turns to action, Chase's canvas can serve as a study of the changing social expectations of the nineteenth-century woman, and in this sense it achieves Chase's goal of expressing "a perfect type of American womanhood."

William Merritt Chase

Date: by 1886

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.11

Text Entries: Gallati, Barbara. <i>William Merritt Chase</i>. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. Text p. 30; ill. p. 30 (black & white).<br><br> Pisano, Ronald G.; completed by D. Frederick Baker and Carolyn K. Lane. <i>William Merritt Chase; Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures, Copies of Old Masters and Drawings (The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work of William Merritt Chase, Vol 4)</i>. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010. Ill. p.197, D.67 (color).

Lilla Cabot Perry

Date: c. 1889–96

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.107

Text Entries: Known first as a close friend of Monet and a champion of Impressionism in the face of her native Boston's early misgivings, Lilla Cabot Perry also built a successful career as an artist. Perry, who described herself in 1889 as no less than "[a]rtist and woman, daughter, mother, wife," displayed resourcefulness and determination in establishing herself as a painter of portraits and landscapes. She was a published poet and the mother of three when she enrolled for her first formal art course in 1884. As an art student in Paris, she grew frustrated with the crowded conditions and teachers' lack of interest at well-known ateliers such as the Academie Julian, and opted to attend Alfred Stevens' select and conservative studio for ladies. When an exhibit of Monet's work at a Paris gallery inspired her to abandon an academic style for the bold color experiments of Impressionism, she relocated her family to Giverny, where they spent ten summers between 1889 and 1909. While she and her husband, a literary scholar, circulated with eminent members of Boston society such as novelists Henry James and William Dean Howells, they were not wealthy; throughout her life the sale of Perry's art works provided a needed source of income for her family. In these two poised self-portraits Perry presents herself in her contrasting but coexistent roles as professional artist and society matron. In the earlier portrait, Perry depicts herself capably at work, standing upright before her canvas with squared shoulders and chin aloft, her gaze intently directed toward an object or person to the viewer's right. Depicted at a greater distance, the ornately dressed Perry of the second portrait stands elevated above the viewer, her face mostly veiled in shadow. Her clothing in each work communicates differently; the loose work smock and bow tie of the first portrait are not gender-specific, unlike her elaborate fur-trimmed gown and hat in the later work. While both figures exude confidence, the later work resembles many fashionable turn-of-the-century portraits of women by American artists such as John Singer Sargent and Frederick MacMonnies in its mood of lush solemnity. It offers no indication that the elegant woman pictured is also the creator of the image, and appeals to the viewer through the figure's mysterious rather than commanding presence.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Date: c. 1890

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.45

Text Entries: Exceptional in Thomas Wilmer Dewing's oeuvre in that its title identifies the hired model, the painting of Madelaine is a perfect example of late-nineteenth-century work whose female subject appealed to many artists and art collectors. Typical of the style for which Dewing is lauded, the painting's meaning is rooted in its female subject; it is a meditation on beauty associated exclusively with the feminine sphere. The figure inhabits a private world far from the hustle and bustle of the era's burgeoning urban areas. Dewing eschews an academic or scientific approach, and the canvas, with its softened forms and hazy colors, becomes a study of mood, evocative of otherworldly delights and fancies. In contrast, John Graham uses the subject of woman as a springboard for formalist concerns such as color and composition. Graham began painting at the late age of thirty-six and his abstracted forms reflect his belief that "Art is always a discovery, revelation, penetrating emotional precisions, space and color organizations." Similar to Madelaine, Graham's female subject offers her profile for contemplation; yet angular and stylized, it reflects Graham's interest not in European classicism but rather in African art-a source of inspiration for many artists of the era. Depicted in a sardonic pose of modesty and coyness, the nude female figure becomes the modernist's coquette. An additional touch of irony appears in the work's title-The Green Chair-which attempts to draw the viewer's attention away from the nude female, undermining her importance as a subject.