Provenance

Mrs. Huttleston Rogers

Rogers, Mary Millicent
Rogers, Millicent A.

American, 1902 - 1953

Explore Selected Works

Thomas Eakins, Rear Admiral George W. Melville, 1905, oil on canvas, Gift (Partial and Promised) of Senator and Mrs. H. John Heinz III, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.33.1

Rear Admiral George W. Melville

Thomas Eakins · 1905 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1991.33.1

Painted in muted lime green, plum purple, buttercup yellow, slate and royal blue, the head and shoulders of a man with peach-colored skin sitting in front of a window looks at us in this stylized, vertical portrait. His body and face are angled to our right but he looks at us from the corners of his eyes, which are grass-green with touches of yellow. One cobalt-blue eyebrow is cocked, and shading in denim blue, butter yellow, and fern green create hollows under both eyes. His flat nose has a broad bridge, and his pale pink lips are closed, the far corner pulled slightly up. His mustache is painted with visible strokes of forest green and his ginger-orange beard is trimmed along his prominent, jutting chin. His short, dark hair is brushed back from his temples and is painted with strokes of pine green, navy blue, and coral orange. His shirt has a wide, golden yellow stripe along the collar above indigo blue, under a grayish-violet purple jacket. The wall over his shoulder, in the upper left corner, is painted vivid lime green with long, vertical brushstrokes. The view through the window beyond his other shoulder is of vegetation and mountains. The portrait is painted with visible brushstrokes throughout, and is especially loose in the background, hair, and jacket. An inscription in dark green script in the upper left reads, “a l'ami Carriere PGauguin.” A second inscription in the lower left is written with dark brown paint: “l'ami Laval PGo.”
Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière, 1888 or 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.20

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière

Paul Gauguin · 1888 or 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.20

We look across and down into a valley with a person sitting near a tall tree and a train puffing smoke beyond, all enclosed by a band of mountains in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us, several broken, jagged tree stumps are spaced across the painting’s width. A little distance away and to our left, the person wears a yellow, broad-brimmed hat, red vest, and gray pants. He reclines propped on his left elbow near a walking path beside a tall, slender tree with golden leaves. The green meadow stretching in front of him is dotted with tree stumps cut close to the ground. Beyond the meadow, puffs of white smoke trail behind a long steam locomotive that crosses a bridge spanning a tree-filled ravine, headed to our left. The ravine creates a diagonal line across the canvas, moving subtly away from us to our left. The train has climbed out of the valley, away from a cluster of brick-red buildings. The most prominent structure is a train roundhouse, a large building with a high, domed roof to the right of the tracks. Smoke rises from chimneys on long, warehouse-like buildings, and a steeple and smaller structures suggest a church and homes to our left. Hazy in the distance, a row of mountains lines the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The sky above deepens from pale, shell pink over the mountains to watery, pale blue above. The artist signed the work in tiny letters in the lower left corner: “G. Inness.”
George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley, c. 1856, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers, 1945.4.1

The Lackawanna Valley

George Inness · c. 1856 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1945.4.1

Bibliography

1953

  • The New York Times. 2 January 1953 (obituary)