Olivia

1911

Lydia Field Emmet

Painter, American, 1866 - 1952

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This appealing full-length portrait, one of the artist’s most popular works, represents the young Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes (1908–1983), a daughter of the Episcopal clergyman and educator Reverend Anson Phelps Stokes, who commissioned the portrait in 1911. Olivia was awarded an honorable mention when it was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in 1912. The artist Guy Pène du Bois admired the painting for its spontaneity and vivacity, and the noted collector Duncan Phillips praised it, concluding that “the artist was evidently enraptured with the subject.” The Stokes family owned portraits by other noted artists of the day, including Cecilia Beaux and John Singer Sargent.

Active in New York and Massachusetts, Lydia Field Emmet was one of the leading society portraitists of her generation. Particularly admired for her portraits of women and children, at the height of her career she was considered one of the most talented American woman artists, second only to Cecilia Beaux. Her fluid, painterly style was influenced by Sargent and William Merritt Chase. Chase had been one of her teachers at the Art Students League in New York, and she taught at his Shinnecock Summer School of Art on Long Island. With its tilted floor, slanted ground line, and slightly off-center figure placed within an evocative interior, Olivia recalls Chase’s depictions of children lost in the wonder of exploring the richly appointed rooms of their extensive homes.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Olivia Stokes Hatch

  • Dimensions

    overall: 162.6 x 102.9 cm (64 x 40 1/2 in.)
    framed: 179.7 x 119.1 cm (70 3/4 x 46 7/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1983.96.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Olivia, 1911

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned 1911 by Reverend [1874-1958] and Mrs. [1875-1962, née Caroline Green Mitchell] Anson Phelps Stokes, Lenox, Massachusetts; by inheritance to the sitter, their daughter, Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes Hatch [1908-1983, Mrs. John Davis Hatch, Jr.], Lenox, Massachusetts; gift 1983 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1912

  • 107th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, February-March 1912, no. 716.

  • Seventh Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, City Art Museum of St. Louis, September-? 1912, no. 42, repro.

  • Fourth Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., December 1912-January 1913, no. 104.

  • Sixteenth Annual Exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, April-June 1912, no. 99, repro.

1924

  • Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Citta di Venezia, Venice, 1924, no. 21.

1982

  • The Emmets: A Family of Women Painters, The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts; The Danforth Museum, Framingham, Massachusetts, 1982, no. 48, pl. VI.

1987

  • American Women Artists 1830-1930, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; San Diego Museum of Art; Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist Univ., Dallas, 1987-1988, no. 20, repro.

1989

  • Extended loan for use by Vice President and Mrs. Dan Quayle, Vice President's House, Washington, D.C., 1989-1993.

2001

  • Extended loan for use by Mrs. Richard Cheney, Old Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C., 2001-2009.

2008

  • High Society: American Portraits of the Gilded Age, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 2008, no. 22, repro..

2009

  • Extended loan for use by Vice President and Mrs. Joseph Biden, Vice President's House, Washington, D.C., 2009-2015.

Bibliography

1912

  • Pène du Bois, Guy. "The Essentially Feminine Art of Lydia F. Emmet. Women Painters of Today. First Article." Arts & Decoration 2, no. 12 (October 1912): 418, repro.

1913

  • Pattison, James William. "The American Art Annual." Fine Arts Journal 29, no. 2 (August 1913): 477, repro., http://www.jstor.org/stable/25587191.

1924

  • Earle, Helen. Biographical Sketches of American Artists. Lansing, Michigan, 1924: 109.

1982

  • Hoppin, Martha J. The Emmets: A Family of Women Painters. Exh. cat. Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA; The Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA. Pittsfield, 1982: 25, 61, color pl. VI.

1987

  • Tufts, Eleanor, Gail Levin, Alessandra Comini, and Wanda Corn. American Women Artists, 1830-1930. Exh. cat. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, 1987: cat. 20, color repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 175, repro.

1993

  • Cagan, Charlotte. "Portrait of Lydia." Berkshire Magazine XII, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 54-55, repro.

  • Tappert, Tara Leigh. The Emmets: A Generation of Gifted Women. Exh. cat. Borghi & Co., New York; Olin Gallery, Roanoke College, VA. Roanoke, 1993: 25.

Inscriptions

upper right: Lydia Field Emmet

Wikidata ID

Q20191587

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