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Family Pictures: The Impressionist Art Of Edmund C.Tarbel

Magazine Antiques,  Nov, 2001  by Linda J. Docherty,  Erica E. Hirshler,  Susan Strickler

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Tarbell's interest in fashion was matched by his taste for contemporary art and its methods, which challenged academic rigor. With My Sister Lydia (Pl. V), he signaled his movement toward freer handling and individuality of expression. Tarbell once again depicted a well-dressed young woman isolated against a plain dark background. In this case, however, he adopted a fluid painterly manner that befitted his sister-in-law's flowered muslin dress and floppy hat. Lydia's jaunty pose, with one arm akimbo, brings to mind Lady with the Rose (Charlotte Louise Burckhardt) [1862-1892] of 1882 (Metropolitan Museum of Art), by John Singer Sargent, which Tarbell had admired when it was exhibited in Boston in 1883. [8] The work also resembles Chase's Lady in Black of 1888 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)--itself indebted to Sargent's portrait--which had appeared at the National Academy of Design in 1888. Tarbell sent My Sister Lydia to the academy the following year, thereby declaring his ability to compete in such cosmopolita n company. His daring and decidedly modem portrait would become one of his most exhibited and lauded early paintings and would earn him a medal at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

In addition to providing Tarbell with subjects for portraiture, Emeline and her siblings served as models for figures in genre paintings of leisured genteel life. Drawing inspiration from Sargent, who had taken Boston by storm on his first visit in 1887 and 1888, and from Monet, the French impressionist most lionized by the city's collectors, Tarbell embarked upon a series of bold experiments in plein-air painting in 1890. Three Sisters, Study in June Sunlight (Pl. II) employs the well-drawn figures and frieze-like composition of academic painting, but the spirit of the picture is wholly modem. With prismatic color and broken brushwork, Tarbell captured a particular quality of light as it illuminated an outdoor family idyll. Young, attractive, and stylishly dressed, Emeline (center) and her sisters share the warmth and comfort of a bright June day. They surround and protect the Tarbells' baby daughter Josephine (see also Pl. IX), partially camouflaged on her mother's lap. Tarbell used Three Sisters to define his private life in terms of fashionability and domesticity. The intimate group of women served primarily, however, as a pretext for studying and representing the natural effects of light. In Boston, where French impressionism was particularly admired, Tarbell's foray into plein-air painting earned him immediate recognition and patronage. After showing the painting at the winter exhibition of the St. Botolph Club in 1890 and 1891 and then at the National Academy in New York, he sold it to the Boston artist and collector Sarah Choate Sears (Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears; 1858-1935). [9]

Following this success, Tarbell conceived a more ambitious outdoor composition as a major exhibition piece. Painted in the backyard of the Souther family home in Dorchester, the models for In the Orchard (Pl. VI) were, left to right, Lydia, Lemira Eastman (a family friend), Richmond Souther (Emeline's younger brother), Lydia (again, with back to the viewer), and Emeline, who meets her artist-husband's gaze. [10] Originally subtitled A Study of September Sunlight, this image of refined sociability is tinged with the subdued tones of approaching autumn.

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