"A loathsome brute... I cannot look away."
This was a fun drawing and a chance to learn Procreate on my iPad. It's for sale as an NFT on Versum.xyz, which is an eco-friendly NFT art trading site. The idea of trading NFTs seemed a little abstract to me at first, but I like that artists can collect royalties on subsequent resales of their art. That is solid.
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| Kramer, digital drawing by Ciana Pullen 2022. For sale here. |
When Meta Veaux Warrick Fuller showed up to train in Paris in 1899 at age 22 she earned herself the nickname, "the Delicate Sculptor of Horrors." It could have been that she presented such works to her mentor, Rodin, as Man Eating His Heart, or it could have been her taste for horror stories from her childhood. But Paris loved her and her sculpture became incredibly popular. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt organized a one-woman show for her work while several pieces were shown at the prestigious Salons. She thrived under the guidance of Rodin and his expressive conceptual style (you may have seen Rodin's most famous piece, The Thinker, a man hunched like he's sitting on the toilet, with his chin resting on his fist).
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| The Wretched, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1902. (image via). You
can really see the influence of Fuller's teacher Rodin. Rodin was known
for combining a slight amount of looseness or sketchiness (i.e. the
lumpy surface texture) with expressive poses to create incredibly
emotional, evocative sculptures. |
Another crucial Paris friend who shaped her future was W.E.B. Du Bois. They met through a family friend (the famous Black painter Henry Ossawa Tanner) who let Fuller stay at his house when she was refused lodging at a women's club because she was Black. Through them she amassed a social circle of Black intellectuals, something she had missed since she left her home in Philadelphia, where there was a thriving Black middle class community. She, Tanner and Du Bois discussed the importance of creating an art that centered Black experiences and presented Black identity with pride.
She was hesitant at first, concerned that it would limit her scope as an artist. She was already battling the constrictive "woman artist" label and didn't want to be constricted even further. But Fuller began to incorporate painful themes of Black experience into her repertoire of "delicate horrors" and was relieved to find that the Parisian public didn't find her gender to be an impediment to appreciating these difficult pieces. Parisians did express shock that a woman could have created such "masculine works of primitive power," or depict such "horror, pain and sorrow," but the pieces were appreciated and her reputation flourished.
Returning to Philadelphia in 1903 was tough. The art world rejected Fuller because she was Black and her sculpture didn't get much appreciation. But she kept working and secured a large Federal Government commission (the first Black woman ever to receive one) for the Jamestown colony Tricentennial, to create plaster figures and dioramas depicting the Black lives in Jamestown from arrival of slaves through modern life, showing Black businessmen, newly freed slaves building a house, and a college commencement among other scenes. Other work of hers was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and in the segregated "Negro area" of several World Fairs.
Her work at this time that centered Black experiences with empathy and value, was absolutely revolutionary. She didn't focus on glorifying the heroes of Black history, as much as to convey experience as something worth portraying, boldly in bronze. She worked directly from a point of view which she never tempered. That is, her sculptures didn't say "please allow me to change your point of view, here's why you should." Instead her sculpture said, "this is what I've seen, this is how I feel-- here, now you feel it too." The shock and sorrow of violent acts were presented in the tradition of Parisian sculpture, as part of the long tradition of expressing shock and sorrow of any other group, right back to antiquity. The everyday lives of Black people she treated as traditional genre painting, neither idealizing nor pandering, but simply showing it because it was absorbing and worthwhile. This just wasn't done at the time; the pressure-cooker of raging racism on one side and respectability politics on the other had largely prevented such a reasonable endeavor.
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| Two sculptures by Meta Vaux Warrick Harris. (image via). I couldn't find much information about these but they are lovely. I would guess they're from the early 1900s. |
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| Self Portrait by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, undated. (image via). |
In 1909 Fuller's husband moved the family from Boston out to Framingham, MA, a small town outside the city. He planned for Fuller to give up sculpture to be a full time mother and society hostess (the newlyweds would go on to have three children together). But Fuller saw sculpture as her divine calling. She continued sculpting at the back of the house, which her husband hated. Dr. Solomon Fuller, a psychiatrist, really should've known better because when he proposed in 1907, after knowing Fuller only a month, she accepted but insisted up front on a three-year engagement so that she could develop her art career before settling down. What did he think was going to happen?
To make matters worse the next year nearly all of her work was destroyed in a warehouse fire. She was devastated for years by the loss of her life's work compounded with her husband's lack of support. "You never should have left Paris," wrote an old friend dolefully.
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| Emancipation by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, views from three different angles, 1913. (images via here, Pinterest and here). The monument stands in Boston and was commissioned to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (i.e. the legal end of slavery). Most representations of Emancipation, especially at the time, involved broken shackles, humble kneeling men who lift their heads dramatically toward heaven. There's also often a priest-like white man standing over. Fuller's is quite different, featuring a man and woman standing proudly around a tree with a third woman weeping on the other side of the tree. Fuller wrote, "I represented the race by a male and a female figure standing under a tree the branches of which are the fingers of Fate grasping at them to draw them back into the fateful clutches of hatred. [There is also] Humanity weeping over her suddenly freed children who, beneath the gnarled fingers of Fate, step forth into the world unafraid." |
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| Bust of a Young Boy, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1913. (image via) As a young woman Beaux had studied portrait art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before studying in Paris. She continued occasionally with portraiture alongside her allegorical art throughout her career. |
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| Sorrow or Mother and Child by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1914. (image via). |
She found Framingham to be somewhat hospitable and supportive of her art (many of her public commissions are still displayed around the town), but also quietly hostile. Her white neighbors started a petition to try to force the Fuller family to move. Despite Fuller's increasing dedication to religious themes and involvement in church productions, her family eventually left their church due to racial discrimination. While in Framingham Fuller wrote plays and designed sets and costumes for Black theater groups back in Boston. She wrote poetry and painted. She became highly involved in activism for women's suffrage as well (but stopped once she realized the movement was exclusionary toward Black women). But she was isolated from her old contacts in the Black intellectual circles of Philadelphia and Paris. Preeminent members of Black society visited their home, but she was feeling cut off. Between this and her time spent in domestic work, her sculpture production slowed. Still, most of what remains today after the 1910 warehouse fire is from this period. By then, with children, Fuller was financially dependent on her husband and stuck in a depressing situation. World Was I began and her mood sank further.
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| Danse Macabre by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1914. (image via). "Danse
Macabre" means "the dance of death," and it has been a theme in
European art since the Middle Ages. The "dance" is usually shown uniting
everyone, king or peasant. This was sculpted during World War I, a war
that changed the generations's understanding of war and carnage. People
enlisted expecting dignified battle and instead found thousands upon
thousands of boys used as cannon fodder, living and dying in
muddy trenches. The Danse Macabre has always struck me as the kind of
poisonous sarcasm that is sometimes the only thing left to express, like
when someone is so horrified they laugh. The cloak is beautifully
sculpted, both enhancing the movement of the dance and resembling an
engulfing ball of flame. |
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| A sculpture (now lost) called Immigrant in America, created for an exhibition about immigration. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1915. (image via) These sorts of commissions for world fairs and government-sponsored exhibitions were Fuller's bread and butter. |
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| Peace Halting The Ruthlessness of War, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1917. (image via). This was created at the close of World War I. This use of allegory (representing Peace and War as individual people) was much more traditional than in her more famous Ethiopia four years later. The efforts of Peace to stop Ruthlessness look pretty futile in this sculpture, and that's how it must have felt at the time; that's how it still usually feels. I love how War on its horse looks like it's rising from hell or out of the sea. The composition is really beautiful; there's a lot going on but it isn't crowded, just a nice sense of movement and form. |
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| A sculpture bust by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (image via). I couldn't find information on this sculpture, but it might be a self portrait because that looks like her nose. |
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| Mary Turner, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. Painted plaster sculpture, 1919. (image via) MaryTurner had been murdered in Georgia by a seething mob the year before
this sculpture was created. It was one of the most gruesome lynchings
ever, and frankly one of the most elaborately violent murders I've ever
heard of, anywhere. The mob had been searching for a Black laborer who
had shot a white plantation owner who had beaten and exploited him. The
man fled and vengeful white mob began murdering any black bystander they
suspected might have anything to do with helping him, which was at
least 13 people. Mary Turner's husband was one such victim. Turner was
eight months pregnant at the time. She cried out publicly at the
injustice and shamed the murderers, threatening to have them arrested.
The mob, then consisting of around 700 white people, tortured her then
murdered her unborn baby and then her, then mutilated the corpses. The
mob continued their "manhunt" and committing more murders, causing over
500 people to flee the area in fear of their lives. No justice was ever
done for any of the victims. White newspapers characterized Turner's protestations about her husband's murder as "attitude." The NAACP
brought the lynchings to the attention of Congress to introduce
anti-lynching legislation. It passed the House of Representatives
overwhelmingly, but then Southern senators united to filibuster the
legislation repeatedly. It never passed. It's especially lucky that
Fuller memorialized Turner in bronze because as the decades passed the
episode was erased: local museums and historical organizations denied
knowing anything about it and schools didn't teach it. There was a
grassroots effort in the 1990s-2000s to re-research the event, publicly
memorialize it and educate the public. Fuller herself likely would have
been made aware through the NAACP newspaper's investigative reporting.
[As an aside, I can't imagine a more terrifying assignment than being
that investigator sent by the NAACP]. |
Black soldiers and workers returning from World War I had finished the bloody battle that was ostensibly for freedom and democracy, only to return to an America that was even worse in terms of racial oppression and violence. Conservative whites who had been steeped in the violence and trauma of trench warfare, aggrieved by social upheavals like women's suffrage and youth culture, their daily lives and hopes held in interminable suspension by WWI and the flu pandemic, released their pent-up rage and fear on Black people. In the 1920s white emotions exploded with hair-trigger massacres, lynch mobs, deadly race riots (not only in the South) and rampant domestic terrorism. The KKK, which was largely fading, came back with a vengeance, nationwide, more powerful than it had ever been. Social reform and community building became nearly impossible in an atmosphere where failure to maintain the illusion of docile submission, even so much as eye contact, could result in multiple murder.
Black people migrated north to big cities in droves,
seeking employment and and a better social situation. That made Harlem
the unofficial capitol of Black American culture. Just as Fuller moved to Framingham the Harlem Renaissance
was aleady beginning in New York. Black identity could
suddenly be big and bold, shouted from the rooftops in poetry, music,
activism and fashion. Even something as simple as living a bourgeois life was a deeply transgressive part of the movement. The phenomenon spread across the country to other
cities, to Black colleges, Black churches, small Black towns founded by
freed slaves-- anywhere that Black people had made safe-ish communities.
That's why some historians prefer "The Negro Movement," but I, like
most people, prefer the poetic "Harlem Renaissance."
Artists such as Augusta Savage turned to Fuller's work as inspiration. Other artists took inspiration from folk art and African art, rejecting the idea of upholding Eurocentric traditions. Aaron Douglas (perhaps my favorite), for instance, married a cubist-folk style with African motifs in his murals, looking to Latino artists like Diego Rivera for inspiration; while Jacob Lawrence's paintings blended German expressionism with bright African colors and modern American subject-matter. The art world changed immensely between 1910 and 1940 , and Harlem changed right along with it, with influences changing from fauvism, cubism and expressionism at the beginning of the movement, to surrealism, socialist realism, and abstract expressionism toward the end. But artists of the Negro Movement always offered an interpretation via Black identity, from African-inspired or jazz-inspired style to cultural commentary.
An influential writer and chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance cemented the idea that Fuller ushered in the movement with her Ethiopia Awakening in 1921. But that isn't quite true; the timeline is a bit off. And it was her entire body of work dating back to 1900 which had such influence. This same writer also expressed disappointment in Fuller as a black artist, however, because although she dedicated herself to showing Black experiences, she was also dedicated to the traditional European style of Rodin. The reduced Fuller's legacy in art history to something of a "one-hit wonder" phenomenon of Ethiopia.
Fuller was older than many famous Harlem Renaissance artists, some of whom weren't even born until 1915, and her work is more old-fashioned. If her sculptures had a soundtrack it would be French Impressionist piano; the iconic art of the movement would sound like jazz. Among the stodgier moments of the movement were somber memorials to the dignified heroes of Black history, such as relief sculptures and memorial plaques which documented individuals and events in a straightforward style. This history certainly needed memorializing, but as artwork I prefer Fuller's experiential, more conceptual take. Despite her Edwardian style I actually find Fuller's approach to be more forward-thinking in this sense than some of the Harlem Renaissance's more literal takes on "Black issues."
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| Two versions of Ethiopia, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1921 (Encyclopedia Britannica puts the date at 1914. Some versions of this existed before 1921). (left image via, right image source unavailable). This piece was later retitled Ethiopia Awakening, by someone other than Fuller. I have no idea if she approved or not. However the added "Awakening" helped the sculpture serve its retroactive purpose of ushering in the Harlem Renaissance. It had originally been commissioned by W.E.B. Du Bois to symbolize the musical and industrial contributions of Black people to the US, as part of a larger 1921 exhibition called "Americans of Negro Lineage." Since Fuller had studied under Rodin and had made complex emotionally-driven group sculptures similar to Rodin's famous Burghers of Calais, Du Bois probably expected a similar take. But Fuller used the Egyptian figure as an allegory, and its striking simplicity have given it enduring fame. The one flexed hand is asymmetrical, something you never see in ancient Egyptian sculpture, and brings the sculpture squarely into the present. It's also sweet and delicate-- another unexpected twist on the figure of a Pharoah or Queen. “Here was a group," said Fuller, "who had once made history and now after a long sleep
was awaking, gradually unwinding the bandage of its mummied past and
looking out on life again, expectant but unafraid and with at least a
graceful gesture.” Because of the allegorical figure representing the African American people, the sculpture is considered to be the first "pan-African American" art. Full disclosure, I grabbed that last factoid from the Smithsonian's site, but I don't quite understand what they mean by "pan-African American." Something representing all African-Americans as a people? The first incidence of pan-Africanism (of the international Alfrican diaspora, I assume), in America? I had trouble learning about this term and its use in 1920s art history because there was another movement in the 1960s called "pan-Africanism" that had more to do with African independence from colonialism. If I had to guess, it's linked to Garveyism and the idea of uniting and lifting up the Black race across different countries. Before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s this was the most prevalent concept in Black activism in the early 20th century. |
Around 1928 Fuller actually created a secret sculpture studio. Without her husband finding out, she bought property with her inheritance, oversaw the construction and maintenance of the property, and would sculpt and paint there for the next 40 years. She taught sculpture classes here as well. She turned her attention to religious art (still often with Black themes, such as a Crucifiction dedicated to a four Black girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham). When he did eventually discover the studio, he underhandedly told her he was impressed-- not with her dedication to sculpture, but that she managed to do a real estate deal all by herself. He looks like a pretty bad husband on paper, but I don't know what their relationship was actually like. In the decade preceding his death, when he was ill and blind, Fuller dedicated herself to caretaking. After he died in 1953 she remained in Framingham, continuing to exhibit her work at Howard University, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and other institutions, until her death in 1968.
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| Meta
Vaux Warrick Fuller in her home studio in Framingham (bottom) and the
reassembled studio in the museum in Danforth (top). Yeah, you can visit
it. (images via here and here). I think this is the "secret studio" but it might be the one she'd built previously at the back of the house. |
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| Jason by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, undated. Painted plaster. (image via). |
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| Dark Hero, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. (Image via) |
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| Lazy Bones, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1930. (image via). |
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| Reverie, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1930. (image via). |
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| The Talking Skull, by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, 1939. (image via). The title comes from an African folk tale in which a boy finds a talking skull. "Tongue brought me here," the skull tells the boy-- tongue, meaning talking-- "and if you're not careful tongue will bring you here." The boy doesn't understand but he runs to the village and tells everyone he sees that he found a talking skull. They behead him for lying and the skull reiterates the warning. In another version he brings them back to the skull but it won't say anything. Everyone leaves and the skull says, "you talk too much." Given the date (the beginning of WWII) it might be about history repeating itself. Of course, it could simply be about secrets and being indiscreet. She wasn't a stranger to keeping secrets like her studio or having to wear social masks at times because of her race and gender. It may be an exploration of life and death, or of confronting lost ancestry and the passage of time. |
Here's my drawing of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller for Inktober. There are some good photographic portraits and snapshots of her around but I ended up using the hazy one in the studio that I showed above, because the atmospheric lighting effect would make a good drawing. I also thought such an incredibly lightweight lighting effect (especially in her hair) would be an interesting way to portray a sculptor whose work is solid mass. There's not much data there-- you can barely make out her features-- but I was able to use other pictures of her to fill in the details. I cropped the pose in a way that uses the implied movement and drama that Fuller's sculptures often employed. And I tried to keep the pen markings in little directional clusters that recall the hand-worked surfaces of her clay sculptures.
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| Admiral Sir David Beatty, Lord Beatty by Cecilia Beaux, c. 1920. (image via) The war-torn horizon immediately conjures images of Napoleon and of J.M.W. Turner's storm-tossed seas. |
A distinct style that arose for society portraiture in the Belle Époque and Edwardian era (1880s-1910s), I'm sure you've see it, that certain something that unites the work of Cecilia Beaux, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Therese Schwartze, Joaquín Sorolla, William Merritt Chase, Lilla Cabot Perry and Giovanni Boldini. It's why all these rival's work looks a bit alike, and why critics engage in a fun circular game of calling each painter's work derivative of the other. But it's hard to know what to call the style. It isn't Impressionism, even though the brushtrokes are loose and fluid, natural light takes center stage, and the implied movement of the compositions looks strikingly modern, like a snapshot. It's very realistic and slightly idealized-- but it's not the Academic style either. Yet it was clearly suited to turn-of-the-century high society, that glittering slurry of new industrialists and old aristocracy: fresh yet unthreatening, classic but not stodgy, audacious yet respectable. Where, then, did it come from?
Velasquez. Yes, the Spanish painter from three centuries prior, the one who painted Las Meninas. His loose brushwork and thick buildup of wet-on-wet brushstrokes ran counter to the prevailing 19th century Academic tradition of perfectionist painters like Ingres. But it was hugely influential to figure painters like Carolus-Duran in Paris and Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz in Madrid, each of whom were prolific and influential instructors of the mid-1800s.
Also arising in the mid-1800s were two schools of plein aire (outdoor) painting: Barbizon in France and the Macchiaioli in Italy, both precursors to Impressionism. While the later Impressionists often used blue-purple for shadows, thus creating a dazzling vibration of color contrasts wherein the entire painting seems bright and fleeting, the Barbizon and especially Macchiaioli shaded the traditional way, with black. You wouldn't believe what a difference this makes, nor how hallowed the tradition, but it anchors a painting firmly on solid ground, as well as in the past. Nevertheless the Barbizon and Macchiaioli painters dared to keep their brushstrokes sketchy and their paintings spontaneous, to let layered patches of color and shadow shimmer on the surface instead of blending everything together. They, too, were inspired by Velasquez, but moreso by English landscape painters and old Dutch and Flemish masters. The later society portrait painters would adopt many dazzling techniques of the Impressionists but they continued to shade with black.
Then there was James Abbott McNeill Whistler. All these portrait artists claimed him as an influence. To them he represented more than an admirable style, but a collection of bold modern ideas (by 1860s standards). Half a century before Kandinsky, Whistler was flirting with abstraction and naming his paintings things like 'Nocturne' and 'Symphony' to draw parallels between pure visual composition and music (his musician friend suggested it, and to Whistler's immense pleasure the titles pissed off the art critics to no end). He had no time for allegory or morals-- he was interested in "art for art's sake," that is pure form, pure color, pure realism rather than idealized Greek goddesses or art with some sort of moral message, which was favored by the predominant Academic tradition. As such Whistler's work incorporated an element of decorative arts (which, after all, claimed no higher moral purpose than to be beautiful). Whistler was mentored by Courbet (as was his friend Carolus-Duran). Courbet was in turn inspired by Velasquez and the Flemish painters like Rembrandt.
This entire lineage is interesting because while Academic Style built upon the predominant traditions of the previous centuries, these society portrait artists built on all the alternative traditions which flourished in the periphery.
This "alternative lineage" idea is completely my own take on it, though.
I don't know if general art historical consensus would agree because it
doesn't have much to say on the subject at all. Because these portrait
painters drew on alternative traditions, they were never on the cutting
edge of anything (neoclassicism, romanticism, pure impressionism,
fauvism, abstract expressionism, etc) and have been almost completely
left out of the narrative of art history. They're considered unimportant
in the progression and eventual triumph of unsentimental abstract
expressionism. Sargent, Zorn and Sorolla are beloved, but most people
don't learn about them from a boilerplate art history class. They simply
stumble across them on Pinterest or in a coffee table book in some
waiting room.
In their heyday, though, these artists were considered forward-thinking. So as Ingres' old-fashioned style dominated the 19th century, his style became associated with it. The new generation of bright (rich) young things wanted something new, something that represented them, yet they still were searching for the next Old Master, to own what their grandchildren would consider important art. Each aspiring young portrait painter who studied in Europe was right at the center of it, various influential movements as they unfolded in real time, meeting their modern idols at cafes and copying the old masters in museums.
And then there was Cecilia Beaux, stuck in Philadelphia.
There was one good place to study art in Philly, and that was at Thomas Eakins's academy. But everyone knew that place was full of freaks. Ever since Eakins had exhibited a graphic painting of a surgery in progress, no respectable woman would touch his school, even if he was a great painter, and even if his school did allow women to study anatomy.
Beaux's concerned family found a relative to teach Beaux instead, one Catherine Drinker. After studying with Drinker and desperate to make some money to support herself and her family, Beaux turned to painting portraits of children on porcelain plates. People would mail in photographs and she'd mail the plates back to clients as far away as California. She drew advertising lithographs ad technical illustration as well. "This was the lowest depth I ever reached in commercial art," she said, "and
although it was a period when youth and romance were in their first
attendance on me, I remember it with gloom and record it with shame." But the money did afford her the independence to continue her studies ("only until marriage of course," she told her family and, to an extent, herself). More importantly it taught her that mothers would do anything for portraits of their children. (I once had this same "ah-ha!" moment with pet portraiture when I saw someone go into the Louis Vuitton store pushing a gigantic dog stroller with a shivering chihuahua inside).
Beaux had to admit growing admiration for Eakins' Academic-style work. And she knew she had to step up her game if she didn't want to be painting plates forever. In the end she worked up the nerve to attend the academy but studied with other teachers. "A curious instinct of self-preservation kept me outside the magic circle." Sadly Eakins would be fired from the academy for his practice of allowing women artists to study anatomy. Philadelphia was not ready for his ideas.
Somewhere along these studies she picked up a lifelong belief in phrenology, which was a preeminent form of quackery from an embarrassing period in history when scientists believed that behavior and character traits correlated with various physical features. At its worst this idea was applied to blatantly racist, sexist, classist and xenophobic agendas-- that's why it's earned such a nasty reputation nowadays. However I find it interesting that a portrait artist would pick up phrenology and run with it. It makes me reconsider the practice of cartooning where physical features are exaggerated to show personality. Much of portraiture is after all just glorified cartooning, where the artist manipulates the sitter's physical appearance to turn them into an expressive character.
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| Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance by Cecilia Beaux, 1883. (image via) |
With the exhibition of her first serious work, Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance, Beaux allied herself with artists like Whistler and Mary Cassatt. Beaux's reputation grew and she opened her own portrait studio. In just a few years she was able to charge as much for a commission as Eakins himself. She was good, but she wanted to be great. She craved a European education and in 1888 at age 32 she set sail for Paris. "Remember," begged her loving Aunt Eliza, who was anxious for her unmarried Quaker niece amid the notorious vices of the Paris art world, "you are first of all a Christian – then a woman and last of all an Artist."
Paris hit Cecilia Beaux like a ton of bricks but she thrived in the adversity. It wasn't Bouguereau, the most nurturing of her instructors, who buoyed her spirits the most, but the underhanded encouragement of the severe Fleury, eyeing her efforts: "...We will do all we can to help you."
At the same time that Beaux was training in the Academic style she was also drawn to its polar opposite, Impressionism. She experimented with incorporating it into her style but found she was too precise and concrete a painter to really adopt the style. However she did lighten her color palette significantly, beginning a lifelong love affair with white-on-white effects. She also studied the effects of natural light and outdoor painting which she would put to use later in her career with outdoor portraits and landscapes.
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| Twilight Confidences by Cecilia Beaux, 1888. (image via) Beaux
painted this early work after spending the summer at an artist's colony
in Brittany. She completed numerous studies for this, and the painting
is her first foray into plein aire (i.e. outdoor) painting. The play of
fleeting natural light is obviously her main focus and the white Briton
bonnets of the women serve as perfect vehicles. |
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| New England Woman, by Cecilia Beaux, 1895. (image via) While this painting was completed a decade after her time in Paris you can clearly see the influence of Impressionists like Morisot and Cassatt. Beaux also was an admirer of Whistler, and one of his most famous portraits was a girl in a white dress in front of a white curtain, titled Symphony in White. |
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| Sita and Sarita, by Cecilia Beaux, 1893-4. (image via) Who wouldn't like to have their portrait made like this, looking mysterious with a witchy cat. Beaux sometimes added a touch of something slightly odd such as an unusual pose or composition which made the image more attention-grabbing while allowing the sitter to retain their dignity. |
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| Sarah Elizabeth Doyle by Cecilia Beaux, c. 1902. (image via) Sarah Doyle was a suffragist and educator who founded the Pembroke College in Brown University. Her former students commissioned this portrait from Beaux, to “be of itself a
work of art of the highest merit" which would acknowledge Doyle's “deep and lasting influence upon the
women of this community,” and “perpetuate her strong, womanly personality.” Doyle is shown here in her academic robes over her personal clothes, with a pose and expression that radiates intelligence and gravitas (to get in trouble and be sent to her principal's office would be terribly intimidating). The simplicity of the forms and fluidity of the brushstrokes create a confident sense of balance. The red background appears plummy purple in some photographs of the piece, and if that's the case in real life it would be an allusion to the symbolic colors of the women's suffrage movement: white, green and purple. |
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| Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker) by Cecilia Beaux, 1898. (image via) Drinker was a wealthy and stylish railroad executive who married Cecilia Beaux's sister. He was also brother to Beaux's first art instructor, Catherine Drinker. Known to be a strong personality, the painting seems to be some sort of recognition and accord between his strong personality and Beaux's own formidable character (according to unsigned commentary at Smithsonian's image database). This man was the pinnacle of glitteringly wealthy East coast society, and here he is so comfortable with himself that he slumps in a chair to accommodate the cat on his lap, the literal lap of luxury. Besides the pose I love the technique of this painting. The brushstrokes are clear watery pools of color, the side lighting that splashes over the folds of his suit beautifully divides his face in two. |
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| After the Meeting by Cecilia Beaux, 1914. (image via) I adore this composition-- the high contrast pattern play, near-abstract blocks of color, and how it leads the eye in an unusual upward zigzag. The bold layering of patterns echoes whatever peppery thing the woman in the chair is saying, and the lively composition which zings back and forth hints at a gathering of others who are listening and ready with a lively answer. According to writers in 1915 the "meeting" certainly refers to a women's suffrage meeting (note the green and white dress) and the "restless energy" is meant to characterize those who attended, someone who talks with her hands and grabs attention. The flattened, color-blocked composition was a pointed reference to abstract European modernism and drew a parallel between the modernism of the woman and of the painting itself (and possibly painter). Meanwhile the careless simplicity of the brushstrokes and lack of shading especially in the face was a reference to fauvism, another modern art movement. Beaux considered herself a "New Woman," an independent cultured citizen who supported women's rights. |
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| Portrait of Alice Davison by Cecilia Beaux, 1909. (image via) I think the way she painted Central Park is neat. |
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| Cardinal Mercier by Cecilia Beaux, 1919. (image via) While this man doesn't look like someone I'd want to know the painting itself is beautiful. The tonal value of the red against the background is somehow surprising; where you'd expect dramatic contrast (as in a Baroque painting) they're separated only by outline. The mottled misty quality of the figure creates a separation from the viewer, as if he's not real. The overall effect really sucks you in. |
So, here is my portrait of Cecilia Beaux for Day 3 of Inktober. I readily found two of Beaux's self portraits online, and while I quite like them as paintings I didn't think they made very good reference images. Nor were the photographs of her very descriptive. With some digging I found a watercolor portrait of Beaux by another artist named Rosina Emmet Sherwood. (Sherwood's life and work is worth taking a look; she did some gorgeous children's book illustration.) I tried to mimic Beaux's own long fluid brushstrokes in her blouse and in the "scumbled" background. I also noticed that she frequently employed a subtle but thick outline to separate the figure from the background. It creates a slightly art-nouveau-style effect, like a rich glaze puddling around the contours of a vase. You can see it in the portrait of Sarah Doyle above with the red background. I added the bow on the blouse to anchor the composition and cropped the image way in from Sherwood's original seated pose; I like how it makes her look like a thoroughly modern "Gibson Girl."
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