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Joan Whalen Fine Arts

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At least eight men and women sit and stand reading books in a room lined with bookshelves in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted with bold and deliberate strokes in mostly earthy browns, gray, black, and muted dark blue. The people all have pale skin. Four men sitting nearly shoulder-to-shoulder and back-to-back against a round reading chair fill the lower two-thirds of the picture. The chair is upholstered with apple red, and the seats are separated by small, petal-shaped tables that hold books and act as armrests. The man to our left holds his book with both hands in his lap. He is clean-shaven, has brown hair, and wears a brown suit with a black tie. The man closest to us and in the lower center of the composition is balding with a rim of gray hair. He has a gray mustache, and he wears spectacles and a gray suit. He holds a post-card-sized book up with one hand. To the right, a man with gray hair and a bushy, chestnut-brown mustache holds a book up with both hands. He wears a brown suit. On the far side of the seat, only the bald head, hand touching the brow, white of the shirt collar, and the top of a brown jacket of a fourth reader are visible. A gray hat sits on the collective back of the chair, and another bald head may peek over the crown. A lamp is situated on the back of the multi-seat chair so the base is at shoulder height of the readers, and the black, gold-lined shade casts light evenly across their books. Two more people bend over shelves or a table in the near distance to the right. A woman wearing a teal-blue feathered cap and matching coat appears to sit and read to the left. She rests her chin in one hand as she looks down, facing our right in profile. Two more people stand near bookshelves at the far wall to the left. The shelves are painted loosely in golden and terracotta brown with swipes of blue, yellow, red, orange, and pale yellow. The pedestal of a bust, presumably of a person, perches on the top of shelves to our right and is cut off by the top edge of the painting. The artist signed the painting on the front face of one of the armrests near the bottom right corner, “T. Bernstein.”
Theresa Bernstein, The Readers, 1914, oil on canvas, Gift of Martin and Edith Stein, 2018.146.1

The Readers

Theresa Bernstein · 1914 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2018.146.1