Provenance

Stanford White

American, 1853 - 1906

Explore Selected Works

One person with brown skin lies on a patterned carpet and a nude woman, also with brown skin, stoops and holds a white cloth to her thighs in this loosely painted horizontal scene. A wall, painted with streaks and smudges of fog gray, white, and pale peach, spans the right two-thirds of the composition behind the people. In the leftmost third, a room bumps back in space, and an arched window there opens onto a view painted with strokes of shamrock green. We may be in a courtyard or another kind of brightly lit, enclosed space. The rug is loosely painted with visible dashes and dabs of raspberry pink, sapphire blue, mint green, pale yellow, white, and brown. The person lying on the rug is angled away from us, so the bare feet are closest, near the front left corner of the rug, and the head angles to our right, near the wall. That person is wrapped with white fabric over the head and chest, lemon-yellow fabric across the middle, and emerald green over the thighs. One ankle rests over the other, and the eye we see is closed. The nude woman stands just to our right, near the front right corner of the rug. Her black hair is short or pulled up. Dabs of gold around her neck suggest a coin-like necklace or large, round beads. Her full breasts hang as she holds the white cloth to her legs. The cloth is painted with short diagonal strokes, which cascade down her right leg, to our left, and pool on the floor. The toes of the foot we can see rest on the back of a pointed shoe painted with butter yellow and black. The other shoe sits just off the front edge of the rug, near the pooled white fabric. A side table with an octagonal top is at the back right corner of the rug, and is painted with crimson red, black, white, slate blue, and harvest gold. One orange is on the floor near the white fabric, and three more are near the back left corner of the carpet. A parrot, painted with an azure-blue body, white around the eye, a marigold-orange neck, and a pointed black beak, nibbles at an open orange on the floor nearby. A narrow white column rises from near the back left corner of the rug off the top edge of the painting. The wall behind the two people and the spaces in the room beyond, to our left, are loosely painted but with strokes that suggest geometric or lattice-like patterns. The artist signed the painting near the lower left: “Boldini.”
Giovanni Boldini, After the Bath, after 1889, oil on wood, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2015.19.19

After the Bath

Giovanni Boldini · after 1889 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  2015.19.19

Kenyon Cox, Flying Shadows, 1883, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2015.19.13

Flying Shadows

Kenyon Cox · 1883 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.13

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Charles Stewart Butler and Lawrence Smith Butler, 1880-1881, plaster, Avalon Fund and Margaret Bouton Memorial Fund, 1990.31.1

Charles Stewart Butler and Lawrence Smith Butler

Augustus Saint-Gaudens · 1880-1881 · plaster ·  Accession ID  1990.31.1

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Male Figure

Franz Ignaz Günther · c. 1760/1770 · linden with gesso and traces of polychrome ·  Accession ID  2005.112.3

A thin, narrow-shouldered woman holding a black shawl close to her body walks toward us down an alleyway past a pair of men wearing all black in this horizontal painting. One of the men’s faces is in shadow but all three people seem to have light skin. The woman’s shawl wraps around her shoulders and the bottom hem, edged with fringe, kicks around her shins over a long, cream-white skirt. A stroke of magenta pink at her neck, perhaps her shirt, is echoed in the deep pink of her closed, full lips. Her gaze seems to be downcast, and her features, like much of the rest of the scene, are loosely painted. A touch of coral red on her head could be a flower or decoration in her brown hair, which seems to be pulled back. Behind her and to our right, two men stand, presumably talking, near a building. Both wear black hats and the collars of their black coats seem to be lined with fur. One man leans against the building and looks toward the woman. The other man looks at his companion, his face in shadow. In the distance, a man and woman sit at a small table on the far side of the alley. Buildings rising along the walkway to our left and right fill the composition and extend off the top edge. At least two buildings close off our view across the far end of the alley. A higher structure behind one of them seems to catch sunlight with a touch of bright, cream white, but the scene in the alley is softly lit, in diffused shadow. The faces of all the buildings are ivory or pale peach, and most have forest-green shutters. On the buildings, the paint is applied in rough layers to mimic stucco or plaster. Throughout the work, loose brushstrokes are visible. The artist signed the work in dark paint in the lower right corner: “John S. Sargent.”
John Singer Sargent, Street in Venice, 1882, oil on wood, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1962.4.1

Street in Venice

John Singer Sargent · 1882 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1962.4.1