Miss Amelia Van Buren

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Miss Amelia Van Buren (Thomas Eakins)
Miss Amelia Van Buren
Thomas Eakins , ca.1891
Oil on canvas
110 × 81 cm
The Phillips Collection , Washington, DC

Miss Amelia Van Buren or Portrait of Amelia C. Van Buren is a painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) that was created around 1891. Today it is in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC It shows Amelia Van Buren (ca. 1856–1942), who is considered to be one of his most gifted pupils . The painting is seen as one of his finest works .

background

Van Buren studied with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) from 1884 to 1885. In 1886 Eakins expressed himself about Van Buren as particularly capable, talented in terms of shape and color, surpassing her fellow students and worthy of special support from him.

Eakin's help involved unusual methods: he undressed in front of her to demonstrate an anatomical fact that he called purely professional. Nonetheless, this process, along with others of Eakins' opponents, was used to obtain his release from the PAFA.

After studying with Eakins, she was a frequent visitor to the Eakins' home on Mount Vernon Street and modeled this painting during one of their visits to Philadelphia. Although the painting is dated to 1891, it is also possible that the picture was created during an extended stay with Eakins and his wife from December 6, 1888 to August 12, 1889. Another friend and student of Eakins', Charles Bregler , later wrote about Eakins working on the picture for hours without conversation.

Van Buren later turned from painting to photography. Various photographs of her are assigned to the circle around Eakins.

composition

Van Buren (photography by Thomas Eakins )

Van Buren's seated figure creates a pyramidal composition, determined by the movement of the head, arm and torso. Your body is illuminated and is given its shape by a strong light from the left. Her face is thin and serious, her graying hair combed back, her head supported by her left hand, her right hand with a fan in her lap. Eakins biographer John Wilmerding highlights the contrast between the poor: one shows vitality, the other is limp. She is sitting in an armchair modeled after the Jacobean style, which Eakins used as a prop several times. It is selectively detailed so as not to distract from her figure. Van Buren's dress is sometimes complex, with pink shapes and floral prints.

Her body is tense like an overused spring (twists “like an overused spring”), which culminates in the focal point of her head, the anatomical structure of which is precisely reproduced and signals the intellectual presence. It shows the eakin-typical expression, also named by a reviewer, characteristic of his ability to portray without gesture or attitude (“mere thinking without the aid of gesture or attitude”). When he was young, Eakins had written a letter describing his interest in the higher class.

Van Buren often suffered from malaise and neurasthenia ; In 1886 she wrote to Eakin's wife Susan about mental exhaustion (“I have at last discovered that the trouble with me is in my head it is exhausted by worry or something or other….”) The portrait seems to express that. Referring to the melancholy, John Updike wrote of the picture as an expression of grief and discomfort (“Discomfort and a grieving inwardness distinguish the best of his (Eakins's) many portraits.”). A projection of Eakin's own personality was seen in the languor, especially given his difficulties with the PAFA. From a psychological point of view, such a profound representation of a student is unusual and speaks for a self-portrait.

reception

Photograph attributed to Thomas Eakins by Amelia C. Van Buren with a cat , circa late 1880s-1891

Miss Amelia Van Buren was the second portrait of a non-family woman that Eakins exhibited. It was not highlighted by the press either at the World's Columbian Exposition or afterwards in Chicago. William Innes Homer called the painting “superb”, equal to the best works of his contemporaries from all countries (“Such a painting can hold its own against the best work of any of Eakins's contemporaries, no matter what their country of origin.”) For John Canaday it is the best of all American portraits.

Provenance

In 1893 the painting probably came into the possession of the sitter as a gift. In 1927 the Phillips Memorial Gallery bought it from her.

literature

  • John Canaday: Thomas Eakins; "Familiar truths in clear and beautiful language". In: Horizon. No. 4, autumn 1964.
  • William Innes Homer: Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. Abbeville Press, 1992, ISBN 1-55859-281-4 .
  • Darrel Sewell, et al .: Thomas Eakins. Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-87633-143-6 .
  • John Updike: The Ache in Eakins. In: Still Looking: Essays on American Art. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2005, ISBN 1-4000-4418-9 .
  • John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 1993, ISBN 1-56098-313-2 .

Web links

Commons : Miss Amelia Van Buren  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Darrel Sewell, et al .: Thomas Eakins . 2001, p. 260 (English): “A lady of perhaps thirty years or more, and from Detroit [.] She came to the Academy some years ago to study figure painting by which art she hoped to support herself, her parents I believe being dead. I early recognized her as a very capable person. She had a temperament sensitive to color and form, was grave, earnest, thoughtful, and industrious. She soon surpassed her fellows, and I marked her as one I ought to help in every way…. "
  2. ^ A b c John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins. 1993, p. 121.
  3. ^ William Innes Homer: Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. Pp. 167, 176.
  4. ↑ John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins. 1993, p. 120.
  5. ↑ 1891 is assumed by most experts, but some assume an earlier point in time based on memories of Eakins' friends. John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins. 1993, p. 121.
  6. ^ Darrel Sewell, et al .: Thomas Eakins . 2001, p. 260 (English): “I recall with pleasure looking on for several hours one afternoon while he (Eakins) was painting in this room that beautiful portrait of Miss Van Buren…. No conversation took place, his attention being entirely concentrated on the painting. "
  7. ↑ John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins . 1993, p. 120 (English): “One arm is solid and 'architectural… suggestive of an unspoken potential for great vitality', and 'the anchor of the portrait' that belies the otherwise reflective countenance; the other hand is shadowed and limp. "
  8. ↑ a b Darrel Sewell, et al .: Thomas Eakins . 2001, p. 312 (English): "higher class [,] the thinking people and feeling ones who always want to see everything [and] to know more."
  9. ↑ John Updike: The Ache in Eakins. 2005, p. 80.
  10. ↑ John Wilmerding: Thomas Eakins. 1993, pp. 120, 121.
  11. ^ Darrel Sewell, et al .: Thomas Eakins. Pp. 260, 278-281.
  12. ^ William Innes Homer: Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. Pp. 230-231.
  13. ↑ John Canaday: Thomas Eakins; "Familiar truths in clear and beautiful language". 1964, p. 95.
  14. ↑ Eakins in the Collection. ( February 28, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) The Phillips Collection, accessed March 18, 2009.