My Daughter

1912

Frank Weston Benson

Painter, American, 1862 - 1951

Shown from the waist up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a wide-brimmed, floppy hat, looks off to our left in this vertical portrait painting. Warm light falls across the woman from our right, throwing the left side of her face into shadow. The straw hat has a rounded crown with a black band around the base. The front and the side of the wide brim to our left are turned up, and it flattens out behind her head and long neck. The woman’s shoulders are angled slightly to our left and she looks in that direction with hazel brown eyes. A faint blush brightens her smooth cheeks, and she has a short nose, a pointed chin, and her full, rose-pink lips are closed. Soft, light brown hair is pulled back and is twisted or braided in a long plait over her right shoulder, to our left, and tied with a black bow. Wispy tendrils fall around her face and down the back of her neck, to our right. Her cream-white garment has puffed sleeves that are pushed up to or gathered at her elbow. A long necklace of the same color white hangs down her chest. Her left arm, to our right, is bent at the elbow as she holds the cord of a window shade. A ring dangles from the end of the cord, near the lower right corner of the painting. Her other hand presumably rests on or near her hip, which is out of our view, but that elbow is bent to the side. The background is mottled with elephant gray and ash brown. The portrait is loosely painted in some areas, especially in the woman’s clothing and the background. The artist signed the work in the lower left corner: “F.W. Benson.”
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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased from the artist 16 December 1912 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1912

  • Fourth Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 17 December 1912 - 26 January 1913, no. 183, repro.

  • 25th Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture by American Artists, Art Institute of Chicago, 5 November - 8 December 1912, no. 18, repro.

1913

  • Sixteenth Annual Exhibition: Ten American Painters, Montross Gallery, New York, 12 March - 5 April 1913, no. 1.

1914

  • American Fine Art Section, Anglo-American Exposition, London, 1914, no. 195, repro.

1921

  • Paintings, Etchings and Drawings by Frank W. Benson, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 24 March - 13 April 1921, no. 7.

1924

  • Frank W. Benson, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 4 January - 15 February 1924, no. 22.

1935

  • Wichita Art Association, September - October 1935.

1938

  • Frank W. Benson - Edmund C. Tarbell: Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 16 November - 15 December 1938, no. 24.

1945

  • American Paintings by "The Ten," Montclair Art Museum, 21 December 1945 - January 1946, no. 2.

1957

  • Extended loan for use by the Ambassador, U.S. Embassy residence, Oslo, Norway, 1957-1959, as Portrait of Sylvia.

1973

  • Frank W. Benson, 1862-1951, William A. Farnworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, 6 July - 9 September 1973, unnumbered catalogue.

1976

  • The New Vision: American Styles of 1876-1910, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, 13 January - 4 April 1976, unnumbered catalogue.

1989

  • Frank W. Benson: A Retrospective, Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, 17 May - 24 June 1989, fig. 85.

1998

  • The Forty-Fifth Biennial: The Corcoran Collects, 1907–1998, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 17 July - 29 September 1998, unnumbered catalogue.

2002

  • Gilded Cage: Views of American Women, 1873–1921, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 13 July - 27 August 2002, unpublished checklist.

2003

  • The Impressionist Tradition in America, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 19 July 2003 - 18 October 2004, unpublished checklist.

2013

  • American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013 - 28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

2011

  • Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 287, repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: F. W. Benson

Wikidata ID

Q46633076

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