LaurieAnnie's photos with the keyword: American

Title: Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) Artist: John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London) Date: 1883–84 Culture: American Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 82 1/8 x 43 1/4in. (208.6 x 109.9cm) Framed: 95 3/4 x 56 5/8 x 5 in. (243.2 x 143.8 x 12.7 cm) Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916 Accession Number: 16.53 Madame Pierre Gautreau (the Louisiana-born Virginie Amélie Avegno; 1859–1915) was known in Paris for her artful appearance. Sargent hoped to enhance his reputation by painting and exhibiting her portrait. Working without a commission but with his sitter’s complicity, he emphasized her daring personal style, showing the right strap of her gown slipping from her shoulder. At the Salon of 1884, the portrait received more ridicule than praise. Sargent repainted the shoulder strap and kept the work for over thirty years. When, eventually, he sold it to the Metropolitan, he commented, “I suppose it is the best thing I have done,” but asked that the Museum disguise the sitter’s name. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127

Title: Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) Artist: John Singer Sargent (American, Florence 1856–1925 London) Date: 1883–84 Culture: American Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 82 1/8 x 43 1/4in. (208.6 x 109.9cm) Framed: 95 3/4 x 56 5/8 x 5 in. (243.2 x 143.8 x 12.7 cm) Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1916 Accession Number: 16.53 Madame Pierre Gautreau (the Louisiana-born Virginie Amélie Avegno; 1859–1915) was known in Paris for her artful appearance. Sargent hoped to enhance his reputation by painting and exhibiting her portrait. Working without a commission but with his sitter’s complicity, he emphasized her daring personal style, showing the right strap of her gown slipping from her shoulder. At the Salon of 1884, the portrait received more ridicule than praise. Sargent repainted the shoulder strap and kept the work for over thirty years. When, eventually, he sold it to the Metropolitan, he commented, “I suppose it is the best thing I have done,” but asked that the Museum disguise the sitter’s name. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127

Artist/Maker Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) Title/Object Name Tomb Effigy of Elizabeth Boott Duveneck Date 1891; this cast, 1927 Medium Bronze, gold leaf Dimensions 28 1/2 x 85 x 41 1/4 in. (72.4 x 215.9 x 104.8 cm) Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=2&view...

Artist/Maker Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) Title/Object Name Tomb Effigy of Elizabeth Boott Duveneck Date 1891; this cast, 1927 Medium Bronze, gold leaf Dimensions 28 1/2 x 85 x 41 1/4 in. (72.4 x 215.9 x 104.8 cm) Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=2&view...

Artist/Maker Hiram Powers (1805–1873) Title/Object Name America Date 1850–54; this version, after 1854 Medium Marble Dimensions 27 5/8 x 20 1/4 x 13 5/8 in. (70.2 x 51.4 x 34.6 cm) Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=2&view...

Artist/Maker William Henry Rinehart (1825–1874) Title/Object Name Antigone Pouring a Libation Over the Corpse of her Brother Polynices Date 1867–70; this version, 1870 Medium Marble Dimensions 70 1/4 x 24 x 39 1/2 in. (178.4 x 61 x 100.3 cm) Credit Line (Accession No.) Gift of the family of John H. Hall, in his memory, 1891 (91.4) Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=2&view...

Randolph Rogers (United States, 1825 - 1892) Nydia, The Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, modeled 1855; carved circa 1888 Sculpture, White marble on dark marble base, Height: 55 inches (139.7 cm) with base Made in: United States Los Angeles County Fund (78.4) Nydia was the most famous of Rogers’s sculptures as well as the most popular, to judge from the fact that the artist sold at least fifty-two examples (see Rogers, Rogers, pp. 200-203 for lists of locations of life-size and half-life-size examples). It is just as remarkable that, having modeled Nydia in 1855-56, Rogers would sell the present example as late as 1888. Although it had still been much admired at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, only a work of wide reputation and classic status would have survived the changes of taste and style that swept American sculpture during that interval. Its subject is Nydia, the virtuous, blind flower girl in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii, published in 1834. The sculpture recreates a moment in the story when she became separated from some friends she was attempting to lead to safety on the seashore, since in the general darkness that followed the eruption of Vesuvius her developed sense of hearing was an advantage in trying to escape the doomed city. Those familiar with the novel saw her situation in a broader sense of brave struggle against impossible odds (1835 edition, 2: 189): Poor girl! her courage was beautiful to behold! and Fate seemed to favor one so helpless. The boiling torrents touched her not, save by the general rain which accompanied them, the huge fragments of scoria shivered the pavement before and beside her, but spared the frail form .... Weak, exposed, yet fearless, supported by one wish, she was the very emblem of Psyche in her wanderings; -- of Hope, walking through the Valley of the Shadow; a very emblem of the Soul itself -- lone but comforted, amid the dangers and the snares of life! In the best tradition of neoclassical sculpture Rogers sought inspiration for his subject among ancient marbles. Nydia’s bent and tentative pose may have been based on a Hellenistic copy of the Old Market Woman (example in Vatican Museum) or the group of Niobe and Her Daughters in the Uffizi in Florence. The latter may have been the source of the baroque forms of Nydia’s clinging, yet flying drapery, which, more than the fallen capital at her feet, suggests the danger faced by the helpless, wet, and wind-tossed young woman. Although Nydia’s regular facial features and the sculpture’s sources in antique art are in the tradition of neoclassical sculpture, its formal extravagance, drama, and excessively sentimental literary source are departures from that tradition that, nevertheless, made it the most popular American neoclassical sculpture ever. The inscription does not include a date, but centered under the artist’s name is the word Rome followed by a comma, as if the date were to be added when the piece was sold. The reason for its omission is unknown. Text from: collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=imag...

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY United States, Massachusetts, Salem, 1819-1895 Cleopatra, modeled 1858, carved 1860 Marble on polychrome wood platform 55 x 24 x 48 in. (139.7 x 61 x 121.9 cm) 78.3 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry M. Bateman Raised in Boston and educated at Harvard, William Wetmore Story lived at the heart of privilege. He was friendly with the most literate and gifted of American and European society, including the Brownings, W.M. Thackeray, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Russell Lowell. By the time Story devoted his considerable energies to sculpture, he already had a successful law practice and had published poetry, essays, and the papers of his father, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story. The judge's death in 1845, a subsequent commission to execute his monument, and a debilitating bout of typhoid caused Story to leave law and eventually to take up sculpture full time. He and his family settled permanently in Rome in 1856. With Cleopatra, Story directed American neoclassical sculpture away from the detachment of Grecian ideals to a new romanticism and the potential for realism and psychological drama. The work established Story as the foremost American sculptor internationally as well as in America. The sculpture is a study of Cleopatra's passion and despair as she contemplates the action that will lead to her fall. A brooding expression crosses her African features, her posture is slumped, and her outstretched hand fidgets tensely. The work captured the imagination of an educated audience that set great store by narrative subjects. Pope Pius IX so admired Cleopatra that the Roman government paid all shipping costs in order to exhibit it in 1862 at the Roman Court of the International Exposition in London, where it made Story's reputation. Text from: collectionsonline.lacma.org/mweb/about/american_about.asp