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This pair of portraits was painted to celebrate William
Page's marriage to his third wife, Sophia Candace Stevens Hitchcock.
She had traveled to Rome with Bertha Olmstead, the sister of New
York's Central Park designer, Frederick Law Olmstead, and became
one of Page's students. The Pages were married in 1857 and were
an important part of the American Artist colony in Rome. Sometimes
referred to as the "American Titian," Page spent countless hours
on his wife's portrait in an attempt to replicate the flesh tones
which he so admired in the work of Titian.
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The only well-known female genre
painter of her generation, Lily Martin Spencer specialized
in themes of domesticity. Domestic Happiness is one
of her most important works. The scene is based on a preliminary
drawing of her two oldest sons asleep in each other's arms.
Their parents, aglow with pride, watch them. Spencer's children
eventually totaled thirteen, seven of whom lived to maturity.
Lily was the breadwinner; her husband, Benjamin, tended the
house and the children.
According to a contemporary reviewer,
the attention given to Domestic Happiness "has exceeded
that given to any other single production that has appeared
on the walls of the Gallery since it was first opened...I
have heard eminent members of the profession remark on the
difficult parts of this composition that they could not name
the male artist who was able to surpass them."
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Raised in central Missouri, Bingham
found the most enduring subjects of his art in the trappers
and boatsmen who populated his state's great rivers, the Missouri
and the Mississippi. Combining the elements of water, foliage,
hazy morning light, river men, and their simple crafts, he
created a sequence known as "The River Paintings."
The Trappers' Return is
the second version of Fur Traders Descending the Missouri
(1845, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which is
generally considered the artist's finest work in the genre
idiom. Both pictures present a dugout canoe moving slowly
downstream with an old French trader paddling in the stern
and his son amidships with an animal chained to the bow. The
arrangement of the figures and the general mood invest them
with a sense of timelessness all the more striking for the
specificity of the scenes depicted.
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Winslow Homer served as a war correspondent
for Harper's Weekly magazine during the Civil War. By the
summer of 1864, the southern cause was lost but the Army of
Northern Virginia fought on, defending the Confederate capital
at Richmond. At Petersburg, which guarded the approach to
Richmond from the south, the siege lasted nine months through
the winter of 1864-65. This sets the scene for Homer's young
Union soldier to taunt the enemy. Bored with trench warfare,
he stands defiantly and challenges the Confederates to shoot
at him. Homer went to the Petersburg front on two occasions,
which provided him the first-hand experience to paint this
soldier's defiant stance.
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As an amateur musician, composer,
and music lover, Mount evinced a lifelong interest in musical
subjects. The violin was his favorite instrument, but he painted
at least two banjo players, one a black musician, and this
unfinished work. Mount's descendants spoke of the artist's
intention "to paint additional figures dancing in the barn."
Technical examination confirms that sketchy outlines in faded
white paint of two high-stepping figures can be discerned
to the right of the musician.
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