Katharine Carl
Katharine Augusta Carl , also Katherine Carl (born February 12, 1865 in New Orleans , Louisiana , † December 7, 1938 in New York City ), was an American portrait painter and author . She made pictures of notable and royalty in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She lived in China for nine months in 1903 , where she worked on a portrait of the Dowager Empress Cixi for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition . Back in America, she published a book about her experience called With the Empress Dowager .
Life
Katharine Augusta Carl was born in New Orleans Louisiana to Francis Augustus Carl and Mary Breadon Carl. She had a brother named Francis A. Carl.
Carl received her Masters of Arts from Tennessee State Female College in 1882. She studied art with Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois and William-Adolphe Bouguereau in Paris and later exhibited her work in Parisian salons.
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overview
Carl painted portraits such as the portraits of Mahomet Ali and Prince El Hadj in Algiers in 1892. Paul Samuel Reinsch and Sir Richard Dame were also portrayed by her. During her entire career she traveled through Europe and China many times painting. In London she was a member of the Lyceum Club and the International Society of Women Painters . She was also a member of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris, the International Jury of Fine Arts and the International Jury of Applied Arts of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
China and the Dowager Empress Cixi
Katharine Carl received an offer from Sarah Pike Conger, wife of the American ambassador Edwin H. Conger , to travel to China in the summer of 1903 and to paint portraits of the imperial widow Cixi for the Chinese exhibition in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. She spent nine months in China and painted four portraits of the imperial widow. She later wrote her memoirs as the only Western foreigner living on the grounds of the Forbidden City in its last days, and published this book in 1906.
“I was obliged to follow, in every detail, centuries-old conventions. There could be no shadows and very little perspective, and everything must be painted in such full light as to lose all relief and picturesque effect. When I saw I must represent Her Majesty in such a conventional way as to make her unusually attractive personality banal, I was no longer filled with the ardent enthusiasm for my work with which I had begun it, and I had many a heartache and much inward rebellion before I settled on the inevitable. "
“I was obliged to follow centuries-old conventions in every detail. There were no shadows and very little perspective and everything had to be painted so full of light that every relief and every painterly effect was lost. When I realized that I had to portray Her Majesty in such a conventional way that made her extraordinarily attractive personality mundane, I was no longer imbued with the passionate enthusiasm for my work that I had started with, and I had some grief and a great inner rebellion before I faced the inevitable. "
She lived in the Forbidden City for nine months, provided that she would not divulge any information about it. The Dowager Empress Cixi gave Katharine Carl a Pekingese and honored her with the orders of Double Dragon and Flaming Pearl .
Katharine Carl's notes on her time in China in her book With the Empress Dowager of China offer a unique and intimate assessment of the Dowager Empress Cixi, in which she is described, contrary to prevailing opinion, as a friendly and attentive woman. Note
To her dismay, however, the press falsely reported that she had made unflattering remarks about the Empress.
Carl's brother, Francis Carl, worked for Sir Robert Hart on the Chinese Maritime Customs Service .
She apparently lived in Hart's house at one point and was described by him as "very airy - quite a tornado". During her stay in China, she painted portraits of HE Tseng, former Chamberlain of the Chinese Emperor, and former President of the Republic of China, Li Yuanhung .
Later years
She later lived in New York City, on Washington Square Park and had a studio in the city.
She then lived on East Seventy Eight Street in New York City. Carl died of scalds at Lenox Hill Hospital on December 7, 1938 . She pulled it while taking a bath in her apartment.
annotation
Individual evidence
- ^ Passport Application by Katharine Carl, dated October 10, 1918. Passport Applications, January 2, 1906-31. March 1925. NARA Microfilm Publication M1490, 2740 rolls. General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59. National Archives, Washington, DC
- ^ A b c d Who's who in New York City and State . LR Hamersly Company, 1911. page 146.
- ↑ a b letter no. 1320, The IG in Peking, II. Edited by Fairbank et al., Cambridge, Mass., 1975
- ↑ a b c d e f Woman Painter Dies from Scalds. New York Times. December 9, 1938.
- ↑ a b c d e f David Shavit. The United States in Asia: A Historical Dictionary . Greenwood Publishing Group; January 1, 1990. ISBN 978-0-313-26788-8 . Pages 80 to 81.
- ↑ Empress Dowager Cixi . Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
- ^ A b c The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine . Century Company; 1905. page 803.
- ↑ a b Katherine A. Carl. With The Empress Dowager Of China . Kessinger Publishing, May 1, 2004. ISBN 978-1-4179-1701-3 . ( Archive.org version )
- ↑ Ortrud Neuhof: The Pekingese - Peking Palace Dog - in History and Culture , accessed on April 1, 2015.
- ↑ Empress Dowager Cixi by Kathryn Menkins on Prezi , accessed April 1, 2015.
- ↑ China's Exhibit at St. Louis. In: The New York Times. April 27, 1903. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
- ↑ Thomas William Herringshaw. Herringshaw's American Blue-book of Biography: Prominent Americans. . American Publishers' Association; 1914. page 180.
- ↑ Muriel Molland Jernigan, Forbidden City , Crown Publishers, 1954.
literature
- Muriel Molland Jernigan: Forbidden City. New York, Crown Publishers, 1954.
- Lolan Wang Grady: Book Review of With the Empress Dowager Of China by Katharine Augusta Carl, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Ottawa.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carl, Katharine |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carl, Katherine |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American portrait painter and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 12, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New Orleans , Louisiana |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 7, 1938 |
| Place of death | New York City |