Matthew Challoner Durfee Borden

American, 1842 - 1912

Explore Selected Works

Set in a valley carpeted in sage green, about a dozen armed men, on foot and horseback, close to us, line up and face off against an attack advancing from the back left in this vertical painting. The men, clothing, and horses closest to us are painted with dashes and swirling brushstrokes, which contrasts with the soft look of the approaching crowd and landscape beyond, which are painted indistinctly with loose and blended brushstrokes. All the men we can see have medium brown skin and are armed with rifles. The men close to us wear long tunics and boots in shades of teal blue, ivory white, crimson red, earth brown, and golden yellow. Most of them wear turbans and some have straight or curved daggers hanging from their waists. Closest to us in the bottom left, a chestnut-brown horse with a black mane collapses on its rider, who sprawls along the ground with arms overhead. The horse lifts its head and twists back toward us facing our left, so the white blazes down its nose are visible. Near the horse’s legs and along the left edge of the painting, a man wearing a mustard-yellow tunic kneels and leans his forehead against the barrel of his rifle, which he braces like a walking stick. His other hand rests on the hilt of his dagger at his waist. To our right of the fallen horse, six men line up along a low rise that angles to our right and into the distance, where it meets a grove of green trees. At the front of that group, near the lower center of the composition, a rider on a dark horse charges the approaching men. Those men emerge from a line of emerald-green trees and growth at the foot of a steep, rocky hill. These men are more loosely painted so details are difficult to make out, but several are backlit by white smoke, presumably from firing their rifles. The hill above is mottled with warm taupe, light gray, cinnamon-brown, and moss-green growth. Atop the hill and to our left, a walled building complex with thick, square towers faces a row of sheer cliffs that march in from the upper right to enclose the space. Their jagged faces are shadowed with cool tones of slate blue, pewter gray, and touches of rust red. An azure-blue sky, scattered with thin layers of steel-gray and white clouds, spans the top of the composition. Bright sunlight flows in from the upper right, illuminating the fallen horse and the men near it. Sunlight also warms the face of the terracotta building and the hill, as well as the peaks of the mountains on the right. The artist signed and dated the work in black in the lower center: “Eug. Delacroix 1863.”
Eugène Delacroix, Arabs Skirmishing in the Mountains, 1863, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 1966.12.1

Arabs Skirmishing in the Mountains

Eugène Delacroix · 1863 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1966.12.1

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The Willows

Charles-François Daubigny · 1864 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  2015.143.10

Shown from the thighs up, a pale-skinned woman looks down and off to our left as she holds the pointed end of a dagger toward her chest in this vertical painting. Her lips are slightly parted, and her arms are spread wide as holds the hilt of the dagger in her right hand, to our left. Her hooded, dark brown eyes are rimmed with red. Her head tilts to our left, her pale lips parted. There are gray shadows at the corners of her mouth and along her jawline. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cloth covering painted with white flecks to suggest shiny thread or possibly jewels. She wears a long, tawny-brown gown with diaphanous sleeves. The bodice is laced up over a cream-white undergarment with a deep V neck and voluminous sleeves with unfastened cuffs near her wrists. She wears a large, teardrop-shaped pearl in the ear we can see and two necklaces. One necklace is a strand of pearls, and the other is a gold and possibly jeweled pendant with another teardrop pearl hanging from a cord. A gold belt drapes around her hips over a narrow waist. She is warmly lit from the upper left and set against an earth-brown background. The artist signed and dated the center left, “Rembrandt 1664.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.76

Lucretia

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1664 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.76

Bibliography

1912

  • "M.C.D. Borden Dead, Cotton Mill Leader." New York Times. 28 May 1912.

1913

  • American Art Association. [Durfee estate sale]. New York, 14 February 1913.