TitleSelf-Portrait
Artist
Edmund Charles Tarbell
(American, 1862 - 1938)
Date1889
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 21 × 17 in.
Framed: 34 1/8 × 30 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.
SignedSigned at lower left: "1889"; lower right: "Self-Portrait Edmund C. Tarbell / We studied together at Bois-le-Roi Fontainebleau"; on reverse: "Self-Portrait Edmund C. Tarbell we studied together at Bois-le-Roi in the forest of Fontainebleau about 1889"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of the Family of Samuel T. Shaw, 1945
Object number1240-P
Label TextAs May Brawley Hill has pointed out, this Self-Portrait was likely one of several commissioned by the collector Samuel T. Shaw from artists who had won the Shaw Fund Prize at the Society of American Artists. Tarbell received the prize in 1893, and the portrait was probably painted at least six years later. The inscriptions indicate that the two men knew each other in France (where Shaw studied political economy).Tarbell's striking likeness in structured around his piercing eye, centrally placed on the canvas. Disarming in its power of penetrating appraisal, the eye seems to underscore the keenness of artistic vision. Circumscribed by his glasses, eyebrow, and upsweeping mustache, it functions as a vortex, remaining clear and fixed as the rest of the thickly applied paint swirls around it. At the edges of his head, the canvas has been darkened to further accentuate the drama of the harshly lit face emerging from the background.
