Some Hard Female Faces

Part of what keeps this blog chugging along (we're now at more that 1,000 posts) is that I seem to have a modest knack for finding associations, for making comparisons. One of those occasions happened a few weeks ago while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I viewed two paintings that I was already familiar with with, noticed a similarity, then recalled a photograph that struck me in the same way.

The painters were Thomas Anshutz, who I wrote about here, Thomas Hart Benton, whose early career I covered here, and the was photographer Walker Evans, Wikipedia entry here.

The nature of the subject matter is young women with "hard" expressions on their faces. They are surprisingly similar.

Gallery

A Rose (detail) - 1907 - Thomas Anshutz
The subject is Rebecca H. Whelen, daughter of a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts board member. Anshutz taught there for many years. This is an unusual pose for that time and place: a more tranquil expression would have been expected.

City Activities with Dance Hall (detail) - 1930 - Thomas Hart Benton
From a panel of Benton's America Today mural, now prominently displayed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The subject is Elizabeth England, future wife of Charles Pollock, older brother of the more famous painter Jackson Pollock. The Pollock brothers studied under Benton, hence the connection.

Girl in Fulton Street (cropped) - 1929 - Walker Evans
From one of Evans' New York street scene photos of the late 1920s.

Thomas Anshutz

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851-1912) was a painter and art instructor who studied under and later worked with the better-known Thomas Eakins. Anshutz's Wikipedia entry is here.

He became the lead instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after Eakins left. His students included Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shinn and John Marin, all of whom are better known than him today. Nevertheless, Anshutz was a skilled painter whose lack of acclaim might in part be due to his not buying heavily into modernist artistic ideology (if his paintings are any evidence).

Gallery

The Ironworkers at Noontime - 1880

Woman Writing at a Table

Figure Piece - 1909

Lady with Bonnet

The Incense Burner - c.1905

A Rose - 1907
These last two paintings seem to feature the same model.

Multi Ritratti: Rebecca H. Whelan

The woman is the portrait detail above is Rebecca H. (Harbert?) Whelan (1877? - 1950?), about whom little seems to be known, if Googling the Internet is any indication. It seems that her father (can't get a Google hit on him, either) was a trustee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where the painter, Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851-1912) taught. Here is the entire painting:

A Rose - 1907
The painting can be seen at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the museum's Web page devoted to the painting is here.

I wrote about Anshutz here, wondering if the woman who posed for "The Rose" was the same one depicted in "The Incense Burner." It turns out she was the same model. Moreover, Anshutz portrayed her more than twice.

Below are paintings by Anshutz where Rebecca was either definitely the model or quite possibly was.

Gallery

The Incense Burner - c. 1905
From about the same time as "The Rose."

Tanagra - 1909
This is the largest image I could find of this painting. Rebecca is known to be the model.

Figure Piece - 1909
I'm not sure if this is Rebecca. The complexion is too ruddy compared to other Anshutz depictions, but the hair, nose and eyebrows suggest it might be her.

Portrait of Rebecca H. Whelan - c. 1910

Woman Reading - c. 1910
Another "maybe" portrait. This is the largest image I could locate while assembling this post: a larger one might offer a closer look at the nose which then could be compared to the profile in "Tanagra." The nose seems somewhat like Rebecca's and ditto the eyebrows and chin, though the position of the head makes comparisons difficult.

Walter Schofield: Structural Impressionist

Walter Elmer Schofield (1867-1944) was a Philadelphian with English roots that were deepened by his marriage to an Englishwoman. Background regarding him can be found here and here.

Regarding his training and practice, this link states: "Born in Philadelphia, Schofield attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied with Thomas Anshutz, and the Académie Julian in Paris, where his teachers included William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He built lasting friendships with Ashcan School painters Robert Henri, William Glackens, and John Sloan. In 1901 he and his young family moved to England; thereafter, he spent summers in Cornwall and fall through spring in the United States." The last years of his life were spent in England, probably due to the war.

Images of Schofield paintings I found on the Internet dating from his early 40s onward strike me as being impressionistic with regard to use of color, and somewhat inconsistently at that. One image below of a painting done in his late 30s is more purely Impressionist in its colors and brushwork. From around 1910 onwards, Schofield retained a rough brushing style, but made his images more structural by adding outlining and more clearly defined color areas. The result was a solid appearance that I happen to prefer to classic Impressionism of the Monet-Passarro variety.

Gallery

Sand Dunes Near Lelant, Cornwall, England - 1905

French Village - ca. 1910

Morning Tide, Coast of Cornwall - ca. 1922

The Harbor, Sunday - ca. 1929

Village in Devon - ca. 1933

Autumn in Cornwall

Godolphin Pond in the Snow - 1940