1889 (ca.), Thomas Eakins, The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Eakins began this portrait shortly after his marriage to his former student, Susan Hannah Macdowell (1851-1938), a talented painter and photographer. The setting is his studio in Philadelphia, where the couple—and their dog, Harry—lived from 1884 to 1886. In this haunting work, Eakins's wife wears an Empire-style gown and sits in an eighteenth-century chair with a Japanese picture book on her lap—accessories that symbolize the artist's Aesthetic ideals. An earlier version of the painting appears in Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer's Book of American Figure Painters (on view nearby). It was later displayed in New York at the 1887 exhibition of the Society of American Artists and was criticized for its "disastrous effects." Today, it is considered one of Eakins's most important works.
1889 (ca.), Thomas Eakins, The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Eakins began this portrait shortly after his marriage to his former student, Susan Hannah Macdowell (1851-1938), a talented painter and photographer. The setting is his studio in Philadelphia, where the couple—and their dog, Harry—lived from 1884 to 1886. In this haunting work, Eakins's wife wears an Empire-style gown and sits in an eighteenth-century chair with a Japanese picture book on her lap—accessories that symbolize the artist's Aesthetic ideals. An earlier version of the painting appears in Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer's Book of American Figure Painters (on view nearby). It was later displayed in New York at the 1887 exhibition of the Society of American Artists and was criticized for its "disastrous effects." Today, it is considered one of Eakins's most important works.