Mrs. Edward Clark Potter (nee May Dumont)
Daniel Chester French American
Not on view
French's occasional forays into painting and drawing include a group of sensitively rendered pastel portraits of family and friends. This half-length likeness of May Dumont Potter (1864–1937), wife of French's frequent sculpture collaborator Edward Clark Potter, presents the sitter in a fashionable turquoise dress with puffed-and-gathered sleeves and a fichu collar. French skillfully blended the colors, working in a loose painterly manner on a pale blue-gray woven paper, now faded to off-white. He presented the portrait to Edward Potter in 1894, perhaps a gift of friendship following a period of intense collaboration on monumental outdoor sculptures for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago the previous year.
