A Definite Swagger

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The New York Sun

In the period between the American Civil War and the outbreak of World War I the United States became a rich and powerful nation. “Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America,” opening Friday at The New-York Historical Society, examines the intense rejuvenation of portraiture in America during this pivotal point in more than sixty works in oil and watercolor, and two small bronzes.

The half-century that followed Reconstruction saw the nation wearied by carnage and destruction transform into an economic powerhouse, its national identity defined during a period of intense entrepreneurialism. Personal fortunes of “new money” came with prestige in the competitive environment of high society and fed a demand for portraiture which helped to both secure and advertise power, wealth, and virtue. Competition for commissions came from both sides of the Atlantic, with talents such as Sargent, Beckwith, Bouguereau, Rembrandt Peal, and Gilbert Stuart all answering the call.

The exhibit ranges from the modern sensibility and dash of Anders Zorn’s “Samuel Untermyer” (1901) to the sweet charm and intimacy of Lilly Martin Spencer’s “Robert Green Ingersoll with His Grandchildren” (1898), to the assured authority and measured gaze of “The Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter” (1887) by Eastman Johnson, the reverend’s authoritative bulk rising from a sienna-brown underpainting, his red episcopal robes rendered in broad swaths, with his bishop’s crozier glistening in white, gold, and red liquid brushstrokes.

“Leonard Lewisohn” (1899) and “Mrs. Leonard Lewisohn” (1901), both by Charles Auguste Émile Durant (Carolus-Duran), portray the German-Jewish immigrant couple with quiet, direct simplicity, a contrast to the swirling romanticism often favored at the time. Paired together and seeming to oversee the exhibit, their dignity and reserve is similar to seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture. His double-breasted coat is a graphic silhouette against a somber background, the slight flush of his complexion crisply rendered above full mutton chops, his left hand on his hip and his right hand — knuckles rapping — on a table draped with a red cloth, the lively underdrawing visible through the thin layer of paint.

He looks right at us but she looks past us, her eyes deep and thoughtful, her forehead pale, rings gleaming on the fingers of both hands pressed lightly against each other. Before an asymmetrical background of deep red, her black gown sparkles at the neckline and shoulders, and down the thigh.

John Singer Sargent’s “Mrs. Jacob Wendell” (1888), painted on his first visit to America, shows an elegant woman in pale satin done up with iridescent Indian beetle-wing embroidery of the deepest green-black, a stream of cascading highlights along her sleeves, full skirt and bustle. Hydrangeas are rendered in free, sweeping brushstrokes, with pale grayish-blue and white flowers among green and yellow-green leaves.

The young gentlemen display a definite swagger, especially “James Hazen Hyde” (1901), by Théobald Chartran. With his whip-long figure dressed in a dove gray suit with a fawn brown double-breasted vest, he stares at you straight in the eye, cocky and confident, a bright snap of color provided by a dash of red in his lapel and a bright red book in his elongated hand.

The small watercolors on ivory from the Peter Marié collection are alone worth the visit. Precise and crisply rendered, these charming, jewelry-sized portraits are like the reflections in a reducing glass. Ivory was a very smooth, slightly porous surface for delicate applications of watercolor using very small brushes to create subtle modeling of skin tones, shifts in light and shading, and rendering of extremely fine details in dress and hairstyle.

Contrasted with the sugar-white lace and regal red velvet of “Mrs. Bradley Martin” (1897) by Meave Thomson Gedney (Isidor) is the lovely, subdued, almost shy sense that permeates “Mrs. Jerome Napoleon-Bonaparte” (1892) by Fernand Paillet. She looks away, and in the restrained palette of browns, somber blue, and black, her simple but elegant dress with its dark fur collar contrasts against her youthful, blonde complexion.

Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America, opens Friday, September 27, 2013 at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York, NY. 212-873-3400 nyhistory.org

More information about Robert Edward Bullock’s work can be found at bullockonline.com


The New York Sun

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