TitleAzaleas
Artist
James Carroll Beckwith
(American, 1852 - 1917)
Date[1882]
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 28 × 19 3/4 in.
Framed: 34 5/8 × 26 5/8 × 2 1/2 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "Carroll Beckwith"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, October 8, 1894
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number76-P
Label TextBeckwith apparently had great hopes for this painting, for after it failed to sell at the Union League, he wrote disparagingly in his diary, "I lose all faith in the chance of my selling anything . . . . My 'Azalie' . . . did not sell" (February 24, 1882). A month later, the painting was hung on the line in the central corridor (a less than choice location) at the Academy's annual exhibition. Priced at $500, it again failed to attract a buyer. Press notices were mixed, with several critics commenting on a certain lack of refinement: "Stepping out into the corridor one starts back in amazement at Carroll Beckwith's `Azalie,' the head is so vivid; and that indeed makes one the more resent its crowding into the azalea bush . . . but it is a mistake to offer this coquet, luxuriously expecting the last stitch to slip that holds her one garment on her shoulders, as a symbol of the azalea,--it is no such flower" (unidentified clipping, Beckwith Scrapbook I).
