Edmund Charles Tarbell (April 26, 1862 – August 1, 1938) was an American Impressionist painter. He was a member of the Ten American Painters. His work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery and the National Academy of Design, among others.

Early life and education

Edmund Charles Tarbell, called "Ned" as a boy, was born at West Groton, Massachusetts, the second of two children. His father, Edmund Whitney Tarbell, died in 1863 after contracting typhoid fever while serving in the Civil War. His widowed mother, Mary Sophia (Fernald) Tarbell, married David Frank Hartford and moved with him to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She left young "Ned" and his sister, Nellie Sophia, to be raised by their paternal grandparents in Groton. Their father's earliest Tarbell ancestor had immigrated from England in 1647.

As a youth, Tarbell took evening art lessons from George H. Bartlett at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Between 1877 and 1880, he apprenticed at the Forbes Lithographic Company in Boston. In 1879, he entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, studying under Otto Grundmann. He matriculated in the same class with two other future members of the Ten American Painters, Robert Reid and Frank Weston Benson.

Tarbell was encouraged to continue his education in Paris, France, then center of the art world. Consequently, in 1883 he entered the Académie Julian to study under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. Paris exposed him to academic training, which invariably included copying Old Master paintings at the Louvre Museum, but also to the Impressionist movement then sweeping the city's galleries. That duality would influence his work. In 1884, Tarbell's education included a Grand Tour to Italy, and the following year to Italy, Belgium, Germany and Brittany.

Tarbell returned to Boston in 1886, where he earned a living as an illustrator, private art instructor and portrait painter.

Marriage and family

Two years after returning to Boston, in 1888 at age 26, Tarbell married Emeline Souther, daughter of a prominent Dorchester, Massachusetts family. Tarbell frequently painted his wife and their four children (Josephine, Mercie, Mary and Edmund A.), and also used them as models. The paintings portray their lives.

While teaching at the Museum School in Boston, Tarbell and his family lived most of the time at 24 Alban Street in Dorchester, in a house that belonged to his stepfather. Later they spent time at the former Hotel Somerset in Boston, near his atelier in the Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street. In 1905, they bought a summer house in New Castle, New Hampshire, an island on the Atlantic coast, to which he and his wife eventually retired.

Career

In 1889, Tarbell assumed the position of his former mentor, Otto Grundmann, at the Museum School, where he was a popular teacher. He gave his pupils a solid academic art training: before they learned to paint, they had to render from plaster casts of classical statues. His students included Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, among others. So pervasive was his influence on Boston painting that his followers were dubbed "The Tarbellites."

In 1914 he co-founded The Guild of Boston Artists, and served as its first president through 1924. In 1919, Tarbell was selected as principal of the art school at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He led the Corcoran School of Art until 1926.

Works

His 1891 painting entitled In the Orchard established his reputation as an artist. Many still consider the work his masterpiece. It depicts his wife with her siblings at plein air leisure. Tarbell became famous for impressionistic, richly hued images of figures in landscapes. His later work shows the influence of Johannes Vermeer, a 17th-century Dutch painter. In such works, Tarbell typically portrays figures in genteel Colonial Revival interiors; the studies of light and quiet are executed with restrained brushwork and color.

Tarbell painted portraits of many notable individuals, including industrialist Henry Clay Frick, Yale University President Timothy Dwight, and U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.

Legacy and honors

·           Tarbell's paintings are held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Academy of Design, and other American art collections and museums, including the White House.

·           He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1927.[1]

Paintings

·           1890 - Three Sisters

·           1890 - Woman in White

·           1891 - A Girl Sewing in an Orchard

·           1891 - In the Orchard

·           1892 - Girl With Horse

·           1892-3 - The Bath

·           1893 - Mother and Child in Pine Woods

·           1893 - A Summer Idyll

·           1893 - An Amethyst

·           1894 - Arrangement in Pink and Gray

·           1896 - Girl's Head And Shoulders

·           1897 - Girl in Pink and Green

·           1898 - Blue Veil

·           1899 - My Family at Cotuit

·           1899 - Across The Room

·           1900 - A Sketch

·           1902 - Schooling The Horses

·           1904 - Girl Crocheting

·           1904 - By the River (Riverbank)

·           1904 - Summer Breeze

·           1906 - A Girl Mending

·           1906-7 Girls Reading

·           1907 - Preparing For The Matinee

·           1907 - New England Interior

·           1907 - Josephine And Mercie

·           1909 - Girl Reading

·           1909 - Piscataqua River

·           1911 - My Children in the Woods

·           1911 - Woman With Corsage

·           1912 - Mercie Cutting Flowers

·           1912 - Dreamer

·           1913 - Reverie

·           1914 - Young Girl Studying

·           1914 - My Family

·           1916 - Nell and Elinor

·           1919 - Mary and the Venus

·           1922 - Mother and Mary

·           1926 - Peonies And Iris

·           1928 - Marjorie and Little Edmund

References

1.    ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter T". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 10 April 2011.

§  Buckley, Laurene; Edmund C. Tarbell, Poet of Domesticity (2001); Hudson Hills Press, 1133 Broadway, Suite 1301, New York, NY 10010-8001

§  Strickler, Susan, et al.; Edmund C. Tarbell, Impressionism Transformed (2001); Currier Gallery of Art, 201 Myrtle Way, Manchester, NH 03104-4393

§  Pursuing His Passion: Edmund C. Tarbell (2001); video, Currier Gallery of Art, 201 Myrtle Way, Manchester, NH 03104-4393

Pierce, Patricia Jobe, Edmund C. Tarbell & The Boston School of Painting Hingham, MA: Pierce Galleries, 1980

External links

§  78 Works in High Res, The Athenaeum

§  "Edmund Charles Tarbell", bio and photos of several paintings, Cafe Naver