Lot Essay
With its subtle sense of interior light as well as its refined brushwork, Mary Reading exhibits Edmund Tarbell's preeminence in executing understated depictions of women in interiors. Recognized as a leader of the Boston School, Tarbell specialized in such elegant and refined compositions.
Like his colleague William McGregor Paxton, Tarbell was seen as a painter whose style and intentions followed in the tradition of the great Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. In 1909 the artist and critic Kenyon Cox wrote of Tarbell, "To be exquisite in choice and infinitely elegant in arrangement, balancing space against space and tone against tone with utmost nicety; to accept the forms of nature as they are, yet to invest them with a nameless charm while seeming only to copy them accurately; to colour soberly yet subtly, giving each light and half-tone, each shadow and reflection its proper hue as well as its proper value; to represent . . . the atmosphere that bathes [objects] and the light that falls upon them, yet with no sacrifice of the solidity of the character of the objects themselves; to achieve what shall seem a transcript of natural fact yet shall be in reality a work of the finest art. No one since Vermeer himself has made a flat wall so interesting -- has so perfectly rendered its surface, its exact distance behind the figure, the play of light upon it and the amount of air in front of it." (K. Cox, "The Recent Work of Edmund Tarbell" Burlington Magazine, vol. 14, January, 1909, p. 259)
Portraits of women were among Tarbell's most sought-after works. Trevor Fairbrother has written, "A mainstay of the Boston School was the female portrait, which typically presents the sitter against a quiet background while strongly suggesting that she is both stylish and intelligent, elegant and accomplished . . . It is consistent with the tradition of John Singleton Copley, whose eighteenth-century female sitters were dignified, thoughtful, and expensively dressed, but rarely ostentatious." (T. Fairbrother, The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, 1870-1930, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1986, p. 66)
Mary Reading reveals Tarbell's extraordinary facility at creating paintings of elegant women in refined interiors. A soft light envelops the figure as she reads with her hand to her cheek. With its quiet, intimate composition, Mary Reading reveals Tarbell's poetic side, as if the figure becomes an embodiment of refinement and intelligence.
Like his colleague William McGregor Paxton, Tarbell was seen as a painter whose style and intentions followed in the tradition of the great Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. In 1909 the artist and critic Kenyon Cox wrote of Tarbell, "To be exquisite in choice and infinitely elegant in arrangement, balancing space against space and tone against tone with utmost nicety; to accept the forms of nature as they are, yet to invest them with a nameless charm while seeming only to copy them accurately; to colour soberly yet subtly, giving each light and half-tone, each shadow and reflection its proper hue as well as its proper value; to represent . . . the atmosphere that bathes [objects] and the light that falls upon them, yet with no sacrifice of the solidity of the character of the objects themselves; to achieve what shall seem a transcript of natural fact yet shall be in reality a work of the finest art. No one since Vermeer himself has made a flat wall so interesting -- has so perfectly rendered its surface, its exact distance behind the figure, the play of light upon it and the amount of air in front of it." (K. Cox, "The Recent Work of Edmund Tarbell" Burlington Magazine, vol. 14, January, 1909, p. 259)
Portraits of women were among Tarbell's most sought-after works. Trevor Fairbrother has written, "A mainstay of the Boston School was the female portrait, which typically presents the sitter against a quiet background while strongly suggesting that she is both stylish and intelligent, elegant and accomplished . . . It is consistent with the tradition of John Singleton Copley, whose eighteenth-century female sitters were dignified, thoughtful, and expensively dressed, but rarely ostentatious." (T. Fairbrother, The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, 1870-1930, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1986, p. 66)
Mary Reading reveals Tarbell's extraordinary facility at creating paintings of elegant women in refined interiors. A soft light envelops the figure as she reads with her hand to her cheek. With its quiet, intimate composition, Mary Reading reveals Tarbell's poetic side, as if the figure becomes an embodiment of refinement and intelligence.