Family Pictures: The Impressionist Art Of Edmund C.Tarbel

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2001 by Linda J. Docherty, Erica E. Hirshler, Susan Strickler

Tarbell corresponded regularly with Emeline from Europe. Letters recently made available by the artist's family testify both to his ambition and determination and to his homesickness and affection for his future wife. [2] Shortly after his arrival in the French capital, he wrote his sweetheart:

Sometimes it seems as though I couldn't stand it not to see you. And then it is that I feel blue but blue don't half express it. Seems as though I would have to take the first train for England [from where he would sail to the United States] but then I get desperate and think that I have got to learn to draw.[3]

In addition to drawing and painting from the model, Tarbell studied the great art of the past, sharing his preferences with Emeline. While Italian religious subjects left him cold, he found the Venus de Milo (Musee du Louvre, Paris) far more beautiful than he had imagined and described portraits by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669) as "divine." [4] The light and sense of life that Tarbell admired in the Dutch master's works also informed his response to contemporary French art. While impressed by the technical prowess of the academicians, he decried their hard, tight polish and proclivity for gruesome themes. Tarbell much preferred subjects available in the fashionable world around him. After seeing an artist painting a model on the streets of Paris, he wrote home, "That is just the kind of thing I want to paint." [5]

Tarbell returned permanently to the United States at the end of 1886, reestablishing himself in Boston and painting portraits of Emeline and her family. In many instances, the young artist used these pictures to announce his talents to the public in major exhibitions. For his New York City debut, for example, he sent Portrait of Miss S. (see Fig. 1), a likeness of Emeline, to the progressive Society of American Artists, where it gained him election to membership. The society, founded in 1877, consisted of young foreign-trained artists, whose cosmopolitan outlook set them at odds with the older Hudson River school painters who dominated the National Academy of Design. Tarbell's acceptance to the society signaled that his time studying in Europe had been well spent. The critic for the Art Amateur commented,

A newcomer, Edmund C. Yarbell [sic], of Boston, sends a full-length portrait of a slender, intellectual-looking young woman in a black dress, with her hand resting on a little table, that is full of more than promise. [6]

Tarbell received praise along with Chase and Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890), both of whom also exhibited full-length portraits of women and whose example greatly influenced Tarbell. All three foreign-trained American artists used portraiture to display their mastery of the elegant French mode of figure painting.

Although Tarbell found his subjects close to home, his desire for professional recognition extended far beyond New England. A year after their marriage, he entered another portrait of Emeline into competition at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris (Pl. IV). Now garbed in a brilliant red evening gown and holding a red feather fan, she appears silhouetted against a dark background. Tarbell used the contrasting paleness of her flesh to strengthen her elegant contours, highlighting his own competence in academic drawing. Throughout his career, Tarbell's images of women reflected his love of clothing and materials and his eye for changing styles. Emeline's 1888 diary tells of sewing costumes and buying gloves for her fiance to paint. [7]