Vintage Art Appreciation: In the Orchard by Edmund C. Tarbell

In the Orchard, 1891
by Edmund C. Tarbell (1862–1938)

About the artist: Edmund C. Tarbell represented the so-called Boston school of impressionism and was a member of the group known as the Ten American Painters. When he showed In the Orchard at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Tarbell became the acknowledged leader of a national impressionist movement.

While Tarbell claimed that he was unaffected by the impressionist paintings he had seen while in Europe, In the Orchard is clearly indebted to a major work by the French impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Luncheon of the Boating Party of 1880–81.

About the painting: In the Orchard is Edmund C. Tarbell’s image of his wife, Emeline Souther Tarbell, her siblings, and a family friend conversing in a bucolic setting on a summer’s afternoon. The figures have been identified as the artist’s sister-in-law, Lydia, standing at left and shown again, seated and with her back to the viewer, on the right; Lemira Eastman, a family friend, in dark blue; Richmond Souther, leaning over the back of the red bench; and Emeline, wearing a black hat and looking directly at the viewer. Poses and glances tie the five together in an intimate, convivial circle in the beneficent dappled sunlight of the orchard, which stretches away to a white fence in the distance.

Tarbell painted the orchard landscape while in France in 1886, near the end of a two-year stay interrupted by a brief return to his native Boston to become engaged to Emeline. Following his final return from France, he painted the figures, posed in the backyard of the Souther family’s home in Dorchester, then a near suburb of Boston.

Sources:
[1] Image found on Conversations with the Collection, Terra Foundation for American Art
[2] Artist and painting descriptions

Free Printable Vintage Art: The Daughters of Our Empire. England: The Primrose by Edwin Long

The Daughters of Our Empire. England: The Primrose, 1887
by Edwin Long (1829–1891)

Different from all other essences in the world the smell
of primroses has a sweetness that is faint and tremulous,
and yet possesses a sort of tragic intensity.
There exists in this flower, its soft petals, its cool, crinkled leaves,
its pinkish stalk that breaks at a touch, something which seems able to pour
its whole self into the scent it flings on the air.
Other flowers have petals that are fragrant. The primrose has something more than that.
The primrose throws its very life into this essence of itself
which travels upon the air.
― John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance

Sources:
[1] Original image from Wikimedia Commons
[2] A short description of the painting and the model (American heiress Jennie Jerome,
mother of prime minister Sir Winston Churchill) by Yale Center for British Art
[3] A short article of the artist Edwin Long
[4] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the painting (seen above),
downloadable as a 6" x 9" @ 300 ppi JPEG

Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Free Printable Vintage Art: Sweetpeas by George Dunlop Leslie

Sweetpeas, 19th century
by George Dunlop Leslie (1835–1921)

I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide.
And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

Sources:
[1] Original image from Wikimedia Commons
[2] A short article on the artist, George Dunlop Leslie
[3] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the painting (seen above),
downloadable as a 4" x 5" @ 300 ppi JPEG

Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: The Ferry by Emanuel Phillips Fox

The Ferry, c1910
by Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915)

About the artist: Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian impressionist painter. He was born on 12 March 1865 to the photographer Alexander Fox and Rosetta Phillips at 12 Victoria Parade in Fitzroy, Melbourne, into a family of lawyers whose firm, DLA Piper New Zealand still exists. He studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne from 1878 until 1886 under G. F. Folingsby; his fellow students included John Longstaff, Frederick McCubbin, David Davies and Rupert Bunny.

In 1886, he travelled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and École des Beaux-Arts (1887–1890), where his masters included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme, both among the most famous artists of the time. While at the Beaux Arts, he was awarded a first prize for painting. He was greatly influenced by the fashionable school of en plein air Impressionism.

About the painting:The Ferry is the artist’s masterpiece. It was developed from rapid sketches that Fox painted outdoors at Trouville, a favourite beach resort in the north of France, and was completed in his Paris studio the following winter. Fox positions the viewer as if peering down to the elegant boating party and immerses us in a sumptuous, genteel world of vibrant colours, luscious fabric textures and warm summer atmosphere.

Originally exhibited in Paris and London, The Ferry also influenced a younger generation of Australian modernist artists when it was exhibited in Sydney in 1913.

Sources:
[1] Original image from Google Art Project
[2] Artist description
[3] Painting description

Vintage Art Appreciation: Paris - The Flower Market on the Île de la Cité by Louis Marie de Schryver

The Flower Market on the Île de la Cité
by Louis Marie de Schryver (1862–1942)

About the artist: Louis Marie de Schryver was born in Paris on October 12, 1862. The son of a well-respected journalist, he was raised in the privileged upper class of French society.As a member of the upper class himself, de Schryver was no doubt innately familiar with the leisure activities of the fashionable women of Paris that would become his subject matter. Among the many changes to daily life in the waning years of the 19th century was the increasing visibility of women outside the home.

About the painting: Both the chic women strolling the boulevards to show off their modish new dresses and hats and the young women selling flowers and staffing the cafés and boutiques in the fashionable areas of town were taking advantage of new freedoms that would not have been available to them even a generation before.

The profusion of different flowers on offer is complimented by the artist’s skillful rendering of the backlit pink parasol of the woman in the background and the play of light on the layered light-yellow ribbons on the hat of the woman in the foreground, as these elements echo the shape and color palette of the flowers themselves. The horse-drawn carriage passing in the background gives the painting a charmingly anecdotal, observed quality which is a hallmark of the artist’s best work.

Source of image and description: Christie's