The Christmas Tree

The Christmas Tree is Julian Alden Weir’s informal portrait of his daughter grasping a large doll in an almost maternal gesture as she gazes at a table-top Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and lighted candles. Caroline, known as Caro, was born in 1884, the eldest of the three surviving children of the artist and his first wife, Anna Dwight Baker. Standing against a plain, dark background, she wears a high-collared ruffled gown of crisp white fabric echoed in the doll’s white dress and in the white cloth covering the table at the lower right corner of the composition. The Christmas tree’s slender branches interpose themselves between the figure and the viewer, relieving the expanses of white that dominate the composition. Its glowing candles and the pink sash cascading down the front of Caro’s gown cast a warm glow on her pensive face. Notwithstanding the painting’s title, its real subject is the six-year-old girl, whose stiff pose and wistful gaze capture a child’s perspective on the ritualized temptations of Christmas.

Trained as a figure painter, Weir at the start of his career looked to portrait commissions as a major means of support, but few were forthcoming. His own family provided models for the figure paintings that, along with still lifes, dominated his work in the 1880s and early 1890s. Around 1890, the artist began posing his wife and children outdoors and also turned enthusiastically to landscape painting, inspired by the bucolic setting of rural Connecticut, where he had purchased a farm. These shifts in his art were symptomatic of his gradual conversion to impressionism, the use of tactile brushstrokes of bright color to render natural light effects in scenes of everyday, modern life. With its indoor setting and dark background, The Christmas Tree represents a mode that Weir was already abandoning, but it also heralds his allegiance to impressionism in the rough, seemingly dry texture of its brushwork and in its unsentimentally direct focus on a child’s experience. In these respects, the painting recalls the images of children by Weir’s contemporary Mary Cassatt, the American expatriate artist famed for her portrayals of mothers and children. Exhibited in New York, Cassatt’s paintings are thought to have influenced Weir’s turn toward impressionism around the time he painted The Christmas Tree.

J. Alden Weir, Blakeslee Galleries, New York, New York, January–February 1891.

World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, May–October, 1893.

A Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Julian Alden Weir, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 1924.

J. Alden Weir: An American Impressionist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York (organizer). Venues: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, October 14, 1983–January 8, 1984; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, February 9–May 6, 1984; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, June 13–August 19, 1984. [exh. cat.]

J. Alden Weir: A Place of His Own, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut (organizer). Venues: William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, June 4–August 18, 1991; Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, September 15–November 3, 1991. [exh. cat.]

Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair, National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venue: National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., April 16–August 15, 1993. [exh. cat.]

On Process: Studio Themes, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 4, 2001.

Artistic Independence in 1898: The Ten American Painters, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 4–July 21, 2002.

American Classics, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 2003–February 8, 2004.

Visages de l'Amérique: de George Washington à Marilyn Monroe (Faces of America: From George Washington to Marilyn Monroe), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2004. [exh. cat.]

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), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France and Miedzynarodowe Centrum Kultury (International Cultural Center), Cracow, Poland (organizers). Venue: International Cultural Center, Cracow, Poland, February 15–May 7, 2006. [exh. cat.]

Cézanne a Firenze: due collezionisti e la mostra dell'Impressionismo nel 1910, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (organizer). Venue: Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, March 2–July 29, 2007. [exh.cat.]

The Weir Family, 1820–1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, Utah (organizer). Venues: Brigham Young University Museum of Art, November 17, 2011–May 19, 2012; New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, June 30–September 30, 2012; Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, North Carolina, October 20, 2012–January 20, 2013. [exh. cat.]

Van Dyke, John C. "Retrospective Exhibition of American Artists." Harper's Weekly (December 1892): 1211–14. Ill. p. 1211.

"The Christmas Tree." Century Magazine 59:37 (December 1899): 224.

Millet, J. B., ed. Julian Alden Weir: An Appreciation of His Life and Works. New York: The Century Club, 1921. Text p. 128.

Young, Dorothy Weir. The Life and Letters of J. Alden Weir. New York: Yale University 1960. Text pp. xxxi, 175, 229; fig. 11 (black & white).

American Heritage 25:1 (December 1973): cover. Text table of contents; ill. cover (color).

Burke, Doreen Bolger. J. Alden Weir: An American Impressionist. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1983. Text pp. 120, 192; pl. 8 (color).

Hiesinger, Ulrich W. Impressionism in America: The Ten American Painters. Munich, Germany: Prestel-Verlag, 1991. Fig. 5, p. 18 (black & white).

Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair. (exh. cat., National Museum of American Art). Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1993. Pl. 34, p. 149 (color), ill. p. 345 (black & white).

American Impressionism. (exh. cat., Adelson Galleries, Inc.). New York: Adelson Galleries, Inc., 1994. Text no. 37; pl. 37 (color).

Lévy, Sophie, et al. 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. (exh. cat. International Cultural Center). Cracow, Poland: International Cultural Center, 2006. Ill. p. 101 (color).

Bardazzi, Francesca, ed. Cézanne in Florence: Two Collectors and the 1910 Exhibition of Impressionism. (exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi). Milan, Italy: Mondadori Electa, S.p.A., 2007. Text p. 41; ill. p. 41 (color).

Wardle, Marian, ed. The Weir Family 1820-1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art. (exh. cat. Brigham Young University Museum of Art). Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2011. Text, p. 142; ill. fig. 7.7, p. 142 (color).