Lot Essay
RELATED LITERATURE:
Elizabeth Stillinger, "Dwight Blaney and the Craft of Collecting," in The Antiquers, New York, 1980, pp. 105-112.
Childe Hassam painted Portrait of Edith Blaney (Mrs. Dwight Blaney) in 1894 during the height of the aesthetic movement, a period when artists became increasingly interested with the purely visual qualities of works of art. Hassam has placed the sitter in the midst of brightly patterned textiles and has carefully aligned her face against a flowered green fabric that echos the cover of the book below.
Edith Blaney holds in her hands An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter, the accomplished poet and gardener who established an informal salon of artists and writers in her flower-filled parlor on the Isles of Shoals. Childe Hassam, a close friend of both Celia Thaxter and Edith Blaney, provided illustrations for the volume, which was published in 1894, the same year that Hassam paid tribute to Celia Thaxter in the celebrated The Room of Flowers (private collection). The handsome cover for An Island Garden visible in Portrait of Edith Blaney (Mrs. Dwight Blaney) was made of gold embossed fabric and was designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman.
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
Elizabeth Stillinger, "Dwight Blaney and the Craft of Collecting," in The Antiquers, New York, 1980, pp. 105-112.
Childe Hassam painted Portrait of Edith Blaney (Mrs. Dwight Blaney) in 1894 during the height of the aesthetic movement, a period when artists became increasingly interested with the purely visual qualities of works of art. Hassam has placed the sitter in the midst of brightly patterned textiles and has carefully aligned her face against a flowered green fabric that echos the cover of the book below.
Edith Blaney holds in her hands An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter, the accomplished poet and gardener who established an informal salon of artists and writers in her flower-filled parlor on the Isles of Shoals. Childe Hassam, a close friend of both Celia Thaxter and Edith Blaney, provided illustrations for the volume, which was published in 1894, the same year that Hassam paid tribute to Celia Thaxter in the celebrated The Room of Flowers (private collection). The handsome cover for An Island Garden visible in Portrait of Edith Blaney (Mrs. Dwight Blaney) was made of gold embossed fabric and was designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman.
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.