Education

Studios and portraits

American Impressionism and Realism: Virtual tour

Like the French Impressionists, the American Impressionists and Realists found their subjects in contemporary life and recorded it directly. Thus, city parks and streets, country retreats and suburban resorts, and the painters’ own homes and backyards became their ‘studios’. Yet, while they were engaged with modern life and devoted to immediacy in their work, the American Impressionists and Realists were not immune to the appeal of artfully concocted studio contrivances. Some of the American Impressionists also painted portraits, which often reveal these artists’ experience with painting en plein air. John Singer Sargent, for example,enlisted the candour and the bravura of brushwork integral to Impressionism to enliven images of his affluent international clients. Sargent’s appreciation of works by Diego Velázquez – which he shared with Edouard Manet, and with American painters, such as James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase and Thomas Eakins – also inflects his portraits.

Australia

From the 1880s, Australian artists led increasingly professional lives as they sought to attract private and public patronage. Many set up artfully decorated city studios, and Tom Roberts’s room at Grosvenor Chambers in Upper Collins Street, Melbourne, was held up as a model at the time. Roberts initiated studio conversaziones, or discussions, of the latest artistic developments, and he encouraged the sharing of art journals.

The Australian artists in this exhibition were among scores who spent time in the studio-based training grounds of London and/or Paris. However, their artistic enrichment came as much from active appreciation of other artists’ work as it did from formal classes. Ramsay, for instance, made frequent visits to view the collections of the Louvre; he was deeply impressed by the murals of Puvis de Chavannes in the Pantheon and saw paintings by Whistler in the Palais de Luxembourg. Ramsay’s generous acknowledgement of the manifest influences on his art – from the old masters to his near contemporaries John Longstaff and E Phillips Fox, to the younger coterie of Australian, British and American artists who were his friends and colleagues – makes us aware how artists respond to and affect each other’s work, and how they articulate their concerns not just through the written word but through paint.

Given their increasing dependence on professional practice, Australian artists around 1900 were naturally interested in portraits and figure studies made in the studio. They imbued their subjects with the glamour and artifice characterising new wealth. Portraiture did attract commissions, which supported the livelihoods of struggling young Australian artists both at home and abroad, but many also used their family members and friends as models, or indeed themselves, while establishing their reputations.

John Singer Sargent

1856–1925

Mrs Hugh Hammersley 1892

Oil on canvas

Gift of Mr and Mrs Douglass Campbell, in memory of Mrs Richard E Danielson, 1998

Acc. 1998.365

Mrs Hugh Hammersley, the wife of a wealthy banker, was a fashionable London hostess, society figure and supporter of the arts. In this portrait, Sargent invokes her charm and vivacity through her direct gaze, slightly tilted head, emerging smile and lively pose at the edge of the settee. Her gold-trimmed silk-velvet dress and the sumptuous setting announce his mastery of varied textures. Although Sargent had not yet achieved unequivocal success in England, Mrs Hammersley believed posing for him was momentous, and she had great expectations for the portrait. The published reviews, which were generally complimentary, verified her hopes for a worthy debut. The critics lauded Sargent’s lively representation and his ability to capture a fleeting moment, citing his cleverness and brilliant technique – all hallmarks of a style considered ‘modern’.

John White Alexander

1856–1915

Repose 1895

Oil on canvas

Anonymous Gift, 1980

Acc. 1980.224

Elegant women at rest were a popular subject in late nineteenth-century American painting. Produced while Alexander was in Paris, Repose depicts a woman –probably the artist’s wife – languorously reclining on a plush settee, and is a stunning example of his ability to combine form, composition and colour to create a harmonious design and evoke a mood. For the viewer around 1900, an image of a solitary woman in a refined interior symbolised a retreat from disquieting modern realities. When it was exhibited in Paris in 1895, some critics pointed to the painting’s flowing design, linking it to contemporary art and popular culture. The figure’s artfully twisted pose, accentuated by the flowing drapery of her white dress and its black linear details, invokes the organic forms popularised by Art Nouveau.

William Merritt Chase

1849–1916

James Abbott McNeill Whistler 1885

Oil on canvas

Bequest of William H Walker, 1918

Acc. 18.22.2

Chase’s portrait of James McNeill Whistler captures the spirit of the flamboyant and aristocratic expatriate American artist who pioneered the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’. Chase portrays the public persona of Whistler whom he described as, ‘the fop, the cynic, the brilliant, flippant, vain and careless idler . . .’ The cane and the tunic coat impart a tone to the painting which Whistler, not impressed with the foppish manner in which he was depicted, described as ‘a monstrous lampoon’. In this work, Chase emulates the austere tonal style of Whistler’s technique by posing him against a neutral background and executes the portrait in broad thin washes of low-key tone. Chase himself concocted a flamboyant public image by wearing elegant white suits, an assortment of rings and a top hat, and kept wolfhounds as pets.

John Singer Sargent

1856–1925

Mr and Mrs IN Phelps Stokes 1897

Oil on canvas

Bequest of Edith Minturn Phelps Stokes (Mrs IN), 1938

Acc. 38.104

The daughter of a New York shipping magnate, Edith Minturn Stokes (1867–1937) was an advocate for the improvement of elementary education. Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867–1944), the Harvard-educated son of a progressive and wealthy New York family, became an architect and scholar. When the affluent pair married in 1895, a family friend underwrote a portrait of Edith by Sargent as a wedding gift. Sargent’s original intention was to depict Edith Phelps Stokes wearing an evening dress and standing alone. When she arrived in his studio to pose, wearing everyday clothes, Sargent decided to eschew traditional accoutrements, such as a fancy gown and fan, and instead painted her in more casual attire with her husband, producing both a striking portrait and an evocation of a modern American woman.

William Merritt Chase

1849–1916

Seventeenth century lady c.1895

Oil on canvas

George A Hearn Fund, 1906

Acc. 06.1220

Chase adopted elements of style and technique from diverse sources, including the works of seventeenth-century masters such as Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn and Diego Velázquez. Like the paintings by Velázquez he so highly regarded, Chase’s Seventeenth century lady simultaneously evokes modern life and tradition, showing a model in contemporary dress, not period costume, but bearing a title referring to an earlier time. The painting also suggests the influence on Chase of other devotees of Velázquez, such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. In Seventeenth century lady, Chase studies a full-length figure from behind; a sliver of light pierces the dark, monochromatic background, and suggests a slightly opened door. By obscuring his model’s face Chase calls attention to the rendering of the satin and lace of her white gown.

Hugh Ramsay

1877–1906

Portrait of Miss Nellie Patterson c.1903

Oil on canvas

Purchased 1966

Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Hugh Ramsay was introduced to Dame Nellie Melba by fellow Australian artist and friend Ambrose Patterson, whose brother Tom was married to Melba’s sister Belle. The meeting was a turning point for Ramsay. Melba, the darling of aristocratic and artistic Europe, had known poverty as a struggling young singer and was a generous patron. The two also shared a commitment to a strenuous work ethic, their Scottish heritage and a love of music.

When Ramsay returned to Australia because of ill health, Melba hosted the only solo exhibition in his lifetime – she showed 38 works at Myoora, her home in the fashionable suburb of Toorak. She also commissioned him to paint portraits, including this one of her niece, Nellie. The little girl sits on an overstuffed cushion placed on an elegant chair, which was reputedly made especially for Melba’s homecoming and vice-regal reception at Melbourne Town Hall. Ramsay’s keen eye notes the accoutrements of the room, which indicate the privileged status of Nellie’s birth.