Provenance

Michael Dreicer

American, 1868 - 1921

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A young woman sitting with a nude infant lying in her lap is flanked on either side by an older woman to our left and an elderly man with a nude young boy to our right in this vertical painting. They all have pale skin tinged with blue. At the center, the young woman, Mary, is draped in a cobalt-blue mantle that partially covers her head and falls to her shoulders to wrap around a dusky rose-pink gown. The mantle is pushed back from one side of her head, revealing dark brown hair. Her right arm embraces the shoulders of the old woman standing next to her, to our left, who leans toward Mary. A tangerine-orange cloak wraps around the older woman and her hair is covered by a white cowl. Both women have long faces and noses with deep set eyes under thick arched brows, and they gaze down at the infant. The mostly bald, pudgy baby lies across a white piece of fabric, two corners of which are held up by the older woman. Another young boy stands alongside Mary to our right. He faces us, holding a basket or glass bowl containing oval-shaped caramel-brown objects the size of figs in one hand. His elongated head is crowned with tawny brown hair, and his face turns away from the infant to gaze off to our right. One finger of his left hand, on our right, rests alongside his rose-red lips. The elderly man stands behind him, leaning over Mary’s shoulder to look at the older woman. We see him from the waist up with a golden-yellow cloak layered over an olive-green vest, and the arm we see is clad in a white sleeve. The group takes up most of the height of the composition and are crowded together against an azure-blue sky swirling with thin gray and white clouds. The scene is painted largely with long strokes of saturated color. The dark gray ground below is painted with sketchy strokes of white, blue, and pink.
El Greco, The Holy Family with Saint Anne and the Infant John the Baptist, c. 1595/1600, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.4

The Holy Family with Saint Anne and the Infant John the Baptist

El Greco · c. 1595/1600 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1959.9.4

Shown from the shoulders up, a man with peachy skin looks off to our left as he holds the feathered end of an arrow up in a hand resting along the bottom edge of this vertical portrait painting. Shown against a marine-blue background, he looks into the distance with hazel eyes under bushy eyebrows. He has a long, bumped nose, and his full, pale pink lips are closed. His round cheeks are tinged with pink, and there is a hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his mouth and jawline. Chestnut-brown, curly hair hangs to the base of his neck, and wispy curls fall across his forehead from under his tall, chocolate-brown cap. The cap has a small gold pin high over the ear we can see. The man wears a garnet-red jacket with a black collar over a white collarless shirt decorated with five black, narrow bands below the neckline. The fingers of his right hand, to our left, rest with the fingertips braced along on the bottom edge of the painting, as if along a ledge. He pinches the shaft of an arrow with his index finger and thumb, so we see the sienna-brown feathers. He wears a gold ring embedded with a small blue gem near the first knuckle of his ring finger.
Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with an Arrow, c. 1470/1475, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.42

Portrait of a Man with an Arrow

Hans Memling · c. 1470/1475 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1937.1.42

Bibliography

1921

  • Parish-Watson, Macdonald. "Art and the Businessman: A Note on the Michael Dreicer Collection." Arts and Decoration 15 (1921): 249-295, 319

  • The New York Times, 27 July 1921, 15:6 [obituary]