Mrs. Mary Arthur
This bust-length portrait depicts the seventy-six-year-old mother of Eakins’s artist-friend Robert Arthur. As a representation of an elderly model absorbed in an old-fashioned task, the work recalls Eakins’s The Writing Master, a portrait of his father, hanging nearby. Here, as in the earlier painting, the artist used strong contrasts of light and dark to define forms and highlight the hands and face, suggesting both manual dexterity and the wisdom of age. Its austere palette and quiet eloquence also reveal Eakins’s study of works by the seventeenth-century masters Rembrandt, Ribera, and Velázquez.
Artwork Details
- Title: Mrs. Mary Arthur
- Artist: Thomas Eakins (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1844–1916 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
- Date: 1900
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
- Credit Line: Gift of Mary Arthur Bates, 1965
- Object Number: 65.83
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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Thomas Eakins
1880s
Thomas Eakins
1880s
Thomas Eakins
1880s
Thomas Eakins
1883
Thomas Eakins
1880s
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