The Chaperone, c. 1908

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 46.3 x 36.2 cm (18 1/4 x 14 1/4 in.)

framed: 63.5 x 53.3 x 8.3 cm (25 x 21 x 3 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of John Wilmerding, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Accession Number

1991.34.1

Artists / Makers

Thomas Eakins (artist) American, 1844 - 1916

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Susan Macdowell Eakins [Mrs. Thomas Eakins, 1851-1938], Philadelphia; her estate; (Babcock Galleries, New York); (Garelick Gallery, Detroit); Marshall M. Miller, Huntington Woods, Michigan; Peter H. Brady, Washington, D.C., by 1977.[1] (Middendorf/Lane, Washington, D.C.), in 1979.[2] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 24 April 1981, no. 92);[3] (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York); sold 1982 to John Wilmerding, Washington, D.C.; gift 1991 to NGA.

[1] Phyllis D. Rosenzweig, The Thomas Eakins Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., 1977: 297.

[2] The painting appears in a Middendorf/Lane advertisement in the October 1979 issue of Art News.

[3] The painting is not recorded in the price list for the 1981 sale, so it was perhaps acquired privately by Hirschl and Adler after the auction.

Associated Names

Anonymous
Babcock Galleries
Brady, Peter H.
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Eakins, Susan Hannah Macdowell
Garelick Gallery
Hirschl & Adler Galleries
Middendorf Gallery
Miller, Marshall M.
Wilmerding, John, Professor

Exhibition History

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, unnumbered catalogue, color repro.

1991: Loan to display with permanent collection, Mitchell Museum, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 2012.

Technical Summary

The support is a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric that, although lined, retains the original tacking margins. A white ground layer was thinly, but uniformly applied. Over this white layer is a brown layer, which was left exposed in several areas of the finished image. Examination with ultraviolet light reveals a grid pattern of the type frequently used by the artist in transferring his sketches to finished paintings. The paint was applied with unblended strokes in fairly transparent layers. Minor compositional changes around the head and bandanna are visible in normal light. Several areas of rubbing that seem unrelated to the present image suggest the artist had begun another work on this same support and then scraped it out. There are only scattered small losses, scratches, and abrasions in the paint surface, but its texture was apparently flattened during a past lining. The varnish has not discolored.

Bibliography

1933: Goodrich, Lloyd. Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work. New York, 1933: no. 450, 203.

1992: Homer, William Innes. Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. New York, 1992: 242, fig. 231.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 185-189, color repro.