Massachusetts-born Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938) studied at the Académie Julian in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and later returned to the United States to become one of the group of Ten American Impressionists. Able to fuse classical training with newer impressionistic ideas, Tarbell succeeded his own instructor Otto Grundmann as head of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1889.
A demanding teacher with high standards, Tarbell was nonetheless quite popular at the Museum School in Boston, with a good number of his pupils known as the Tarbellites. In his own works, like many of his contemporaries Tarbell often focused on pleasantly arranged domestic scenes, with a particular fondness for paintings centered around his wife Emeline and their children. He also excelled at portraiture and earned several significant commissions in that manner, including three United States Presidential portraits.
The Golden Screen
What tends to push Tarbell to the forefront of the American Impressionists was his eye for slightly unusual and compelling compositions, along with a unique energy or sense of detail that made his paintings distinctive. In a work like The Golden Screen (circa 1898), a young woman sits perched upon a chair holding a parasol. Her pale dress is shaded with hints of violet, and beyond her the room is sunlit amid the promised golden backdrop.
Though she may be in her chair posing dutifully at the moment, the girl appears ready to float off with a rustle of skirts out into the brightness of the day. At the same time, however, a darker-toned hat shadows her face and her expression seems a bit wistful or preoccupied, once again heightening the intriguing air of evasive beauty.
The Blue Veil
Tarbell's The Blue Veil (1898) is another stunning effort, using effects of sheer billowing blue tones across the somewhat impassive profile of a young woman. The background is vague, but a vivid and unexpected green note at the top of the girl's hat draws the eye upward from the titled blue and presumably windswept veil. A white feather plume also appears to be fluttering in the wind. By keeping the background details neutral, Tarbell made the diaphanous veil the painting's focal point, as well as creating contrast between such a solemn female wearing a hat that seems so rebelliously airborne.
Girl with a Violin
Alabaster skin and black velvet brought about an artistic social scandal in John Singer Sargent's 1884 Portrait of Madame X, while in Tarbell's 1890 Girl with Violin, a similar effect was striking though not shocking. Set before a dark, almost mystical background, a young woman holding an equally dark violin plays with intent composure.
Had Tarbell posed his violinist in a brighter dress, the visual line might not have so clearly followed her smooth white arms and the purposeful fingering of her instrument. Only a single gold bangle distracts from the serious beauty of the painting, and in its simplicity the bracelet centers the eye and adds an interesting detail to an already interesting subject.
Cutting Origami
The wave of fascination for Japanese culture that started in the mid-19th century influenced many artists, including of course the French Impressionists and also Edmund Tarbell as an American Impressionist. Tarbell's 1908 painting Cutting Origami places a girl in a kimono amid a Japanese setting as she creates an origami paper composition with studied effort.
Like Claude Monet's painting of his wife in a Japanese costume, however—or the many kimonoed ladies of William Merritt Chase—Tarbell's origami girl is not Asian and is merely posing in the mode of Japonisme. Her silky gray kimono is modest, detailed with subtly scattered white brush patterns and just a hint of vermillion at the waist. Tarbell's skill extends further to the unfolding spiral of paper, which almost seems to be springing across the canvas.
Legacy
Other fine and unusually composed efforts by Tarbell include Across the Room, In the Orchard, The Sisters and Preparing for the Matinee, the latter being one of Tarbell's best-known works. Edmund Tarbell died in 1938 after a long and distinguished career, and his paintings are now part of many major museum collections and also can be found at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Sources
- Domestic Bliss: Family Life in American Painting, 1840-1910 -- Lee M. Edwards, Timothy Anglin Burgard (Hudson River Museum Press, 1986)
- Edmund C. Tarbell -- The Terra Foundation of American Art
