TitleGeorge Willoughby Maynard
Artist
Julian Alden Weir
(American, 1852 - 1919)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/4 × 25 1/4 in.
Framed: 36 3/4 × 32 × 3 1/2 in.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation, April 17, 1882
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1393-P
Label TextWeir's friendship with Maynard can be traced to as early as 1878, when both were involved with the informal "Art Club," a group of New York painters. At the time of the execution of the present portrait, they were neighbors in the Benedict Building on Washington Square East. Prior to Weir's 1881 trip to Europe, Maynard provided him with a letter of introduction (AAA 70), and two years later, he was a guest at Weir's wedding dinner. Maynard is also known to have executed a portrait drawing of Weir (private collection).Doreen Bolger Burke has noted similarities between Weir's likeness of Maynard and an earlier portrait of Olin Warner (1879, American Academy of Arts and Letters) (Burke, Julian Alden Weir and the National Academy of Design, 10). Indeed both were praised by the press as significant advances in American portraiture. A writer in The Critic reviewing the 1882 NAD Annual commented, "Mr. Weir is one of the few painters who can paint a big picture bigly. His portrait of the painter Maynard easily ranks first among all the portraits here, owing to its breadth of handling, its simplicity, sincerity, and pure characterization of the sitter."
As in his diploma contribution, Head of a Girl (1391-P), of about the same date, Weir restricts his illumination to the face and hand, the latter particularly carefully painted and gracefully posed. Here, however, the picture is animated by Maynard's affecting and probing gaze, an element which prompted the New York Herald's reviewer to comment on his "apparently no very amiable frame of mind."
