Worth Sharing This Week: Wonderful Things

 

                                          1892 

Years ago, when I was in late elementary, early junior high, I became quite fond of reading Barbara Cartland paperback romances.  Truth, I learned a great deal from her about history, since her novels were always set in different periods and she did impart more than the 'gasp...sigh...' form of romance to the reader.  One did come away feeling that something had been learned.  One of the books I remember most for what I learned dealt with a European (English?  French? No clue) who painted in the then controversial Impressionistic style.   I can't tell you now what I learned but I can tell you that once I was old enough to research art on my own, the Impressionists have always drawn my attention first and foremost.  

This year, when I began these posts, "Worth Sharing", I did so to soothe my own soul and to lift my own spirits.  In the end, I've found these posts both fun and great opportunities to learn something new.  What isn't new: my love of the Romantic and Impressionist style paintings.   But I've learned a great deal about composers, music, artists, authors, and subject matters that I might not have ever looked into had I not been led to look and read due to someone else mentioning them, my own curiosity or happiest moments of all, what I call 'stumble upon moments', in which I literally come across lovely things while not really looking for anything.

A few weeks ago, I was on Pinterest and came across a truly lovely set of paintings all by the same artist.  A complete and total surprise...Which led me to look up the artist.   That's the sort of thing I mean, that I'm not really looking for these lovely things or opportunities to learn something new, but I'm being presented with a chance to stop and look.

1909

                                                   

All of the above pictures were painted by Edmund C. Tarbell, a member of The Ten American Painters, also known as the Boston School.  

Tarbell was born April 26, 1862 in Groton, Massachusetts, a town his ancestors helped found and settle.  His father died in 1863 after contracting Typhoid Fever during the Civil War.  His mother remarried a manufacturer and left Edmund and his sister to be raised by his paternal grandparents in Groton.

Always artistic, he studied under several teachers before attending classes in Boston and later, being highly encouraged,  going to Paris in 1883, where he took lessons at Académie Julian.  He underwent rigorous training, copying old masters but also being exposed to Impressionist painters, both influences seen in his future works.  While in Europe he toured Germany, Italy, Belgium and Brittany.

In 1886, he returned to Boston and began working as an illustrator, teaching painting and doing portraits.

Tarbell married two years later.  He often used his wife, her sisters, his children and grandchildren as subject matter and preferred having them posed.  Yet his paintings also accurately reflected their lives.  Eventually his painting "In the Orchard" which depicted his wife and her sisters at leisure drew attention to his work.

                    "In the Orchard"  1891

Tarbell taught, acted as director of various schools and continued to paint through 1928.  About that time he retired and died in 1938.

                                          Henry Clay Frick with daughter Helen Frick, 1910