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CECILIA BEAUX Madonna
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Cecilia Beaux was one of the leading painters of America's Gilded Age. She enjoyed its society and painted its portraits. Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry James, John LaFarge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens were close friends. Cecilia's early years were spent in Philadelphia, where she lived with her grandmother. Early on she displayed an affinity for art which led to studies with Catherine Anne Drinker, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art's first woman instructor. Subsequently she joined William Sartain's all woman painting class. After winning the coveted Mary Smith prize for her painting Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance at the Academy, Beaux began receiving many portrait commissions. In 1887, she left for Paris. While in France, Beaux's palette became lighter; she rejected the dark brownish palette favored by the Eakins-dominated Pennsylvania Academy and came under the influence of John Singer Sargent and the French impressionists. By 1890, Beaux had established her Washington Square studio in New York City. This signaled the beginning of her most productive and innovative phase. A number of superb double-portraits, most notably The Dancing Lesson, featuring the daughters of her close friends the Gilders, and Mother and Daughter, also from 1898, won her acclaim and medals. Madonna, is a very personal work. Beaux captures the intimacy of a mother and child with her hallmark fluid, bravura brushwork. The artist's choice of subject, the composition and the scale, recalls devotional works of the Italian Renaissance. |
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American School Robert Salmon |
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